Wow, that's me! Wait, is that a suit and tie? Yeesh, let's not overdo it there, Boyd.

Ryan L. Boyd

  • Assistant Professor, Psychologist, Computational Social Scientist
  • College of Connected Computing, Vanderbilt University
    (beginning Fall 2026)
  • Handsome like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich


I am a computational social scientist who studies how the words we use in everyday life reveals a person’s psychology — their motives, personality, thinking style, and general way of engaging with the world around them.

I work with all types of language data — personal writings, stories, news broadcasts, social media, political speeches — and use computational methods to measure, study, and understand the psychology behind the language.