David Markowitz

Associate Professor Michigan State University

  • East Lansing MI

David Markowitz's research uses language to understand social and psychological processes.

Contact

Michigan State University

View more experts managed by Michigan State University

Media

Biography

Dr. Markowitz is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at Michigan State University, whose research uses language to understand social and psychological processes. For example, his work has examined the lies people tell on dating apps, how language patterns in pet adoption profiles predict a pet getting adopted, and how verbal complexity associates with social engagements and money, plus online petition support. Some of his recent work has also evaluated how bias is revealed in physician medical notes and office discipline referrals.

Dr. Markowitz was selected as a "Rising Star" of the Association for Psychological Science in 2022.

His work has appeared in top outlets such as the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Communication, Communication Research, and Human Communication Research.

Industry Expertise

Research
Education/Learning

Areas of Expertise

Media Psychology
Persuasion
Text Analysis
Language
Deception
Computer-mediated communication

Accomplishments

Best Paper Award

2022

International Association of Language and Social Psychology and the Journal of Language and Social Psychology

Rising Star

2022

Association for Psychological Science

APEX Award for Academic Publishing Excellence

2020

Education

Stanford University

Ph.D.

Communication

2018

Cornell University

M.S.

Communication

2015

Cornell University

B.S.

Communication

2010

Affiliations

  • Communication Studies : Editorial Board Member
  • Academy of Management (AoM)
  • Association for Psychological Science (APS)
  • International Communication Association (ICA)
  • National Communication Association (NCA)
Show All +

News

Here’s What A Language Researcher Says About The January 6th Hearings

Forbes  online

2022-10-14

The ninth and final January 6th hearing concluded this week, culminating in the committee’s vote to subpoena former President Trump. Reactions to the hearings have been mixed, but also quite predictable along party lines.

View More

Which Types of People Are the Most Deceptive?

Psychology Today  online

2022-07-05

People are often drawn to the topic of deception because they want to become better lie detectors. Decades of deception research suggest trying to achieve this aim is a fool’s errand. However, our default is to assume that others are being honest with us, and we’re therefore poor at detecting lies.

View More

New research reveals gender and race bias in medical care

Fox46 Charlotte (Queen City News)  online

2022-03-21

David Markowitz, a psychology of language researcher from the University of Oregon, analyzed 1.8 million medical records from a healthcare system in Boston. The research showed medical caregivers tended to be more impersonal with women and pay less attention to the negative experience of Black patients.

View More

Event Appearances

Deception and language: Insights about communication and the self

Society for Personality and Social Psychology  San Diego

Linguistic markers of inherent AI deception and intentional human deception: Evidence from hotel reviews

109th Annual Conference of the National Communication Association  National Harbor

Analytic ecosystems increase trust in science and vaccine attitudes

European Association of Social Psychology Meeting  Bath

Research Grants

Numeric selfefficacy, objective numeracy, and overconfidence

National Science Foundation

2020-2023

Journal Articles

Political ideology shapes risk and benefit judgments of COVID-19 vaccines

Risk Analysis

2023

In April 2021, the use of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine was paused to investigate whether it had caused serious blood clots to a small number of women (six out of 6.8 million Americans who had been administered that vaccine).

View more

Taking Note of Our Biases: How Language Patterns Reveal Bias Underlying the Use of Office Discipline Referrals in Exclusionary Discipline

Educational Researcher

2023

The comments teachers write when sending students to the office have the potential to increase our understanding of how bias may contribute to longstanding racial disparities in school discipline. However, large-scale analysis of open text has traditionally had a prohibitive cost.

View more

Analytic thinking as revealed by function words: What does language really measure?

Applied Cognitive Psychology

2023

Understanding how people think is a key interest in psychology, and recent advances in automated text analysis have used a verbal analytic thinking index to approximate Kahneman's System 2 (e.g., deliberate, rational thinking). That is, prior work used a style word index to assess university student admissions essays and observed that those who used more articles and prepositions relative to storytelling words (e.g., pronouns) had higher grades at the end of college.

View more

Show All +