Social media such as Twitter and Facebook provide a rich, if imperfect, portal into people’s lives. We analyze tens of millions of Facebook posts to study how language use varies with people’s personality, depression, and empathy. Word clouds, automatically generated lexica, and chatbots with personality provide insight into these traits and support research in psychology.

Lyle Ungar is a Professor of Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania, where he also holds appointments in Psychology, Bioengineering, Genomics and Computational Biology, and Operations, Information and Decisions.  He has published over 300 articles, supervised two dozen Ph.D. students, and is co-inventor on ten patents. His current research focuses on using natural language processing and explainable AI for psychological research, including analyzing social media and cell phone sensor data to better understand the drivers of physical and mental well-being.