Psychological trauma and emotional upheaval as revealed in academic writing: The case of COVID-19

Abstract

The current paper used a preregistered set of language dimensions to indicate how scientists psychologically managed the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects. Study 1 evaluated over 1.8 million preprints from arXiv.org and assessed how papers written during the COVID-19 pandemic reflected patterns of psychological trauma and emotional upheaval compared to those written before the pandemic. The data suggest papers written during the pandemic contained more affect and more cognitive processing terms to indicate writers working through a crisis than papers written before the pandemic. Study 2 (N = 74,744 published PLoS One papers) observed consistent emotion results, though cognitive processing and analytic thinking patterns were inconsistent. Papers written specifically about COVID-19 contained more emotion than those not written about COVID-19. Finally, Study 3 (N = 361,189 published papers) replicated the Study 2emotion results across more diverse journals and observed papers written during the pandemic contained a greater rate of cognitive processing terms, but a lower rate of analytic thinking, than papers written before the pandemic. These data suggest emotional upheavals are associated with psychological correlates reflected in the language of scientists at scale. Implications for psychology of language research and trauma are discussed.

Instrumental Goal Activation Increases Online Petition Support Across Languages

“…That is, the degree to which various measures of complexity can identify petitions that receive high or low numbers of supporters, or those that are victorious from those that fail, should be examined in future research with more sophisticated natural language processing techniques. Third, the effect sizes in the current paper are small, but consistent with those reported in other research (Kern et al, 2014;Kramer et al, 2014;Markowitz, 2022;Seraj et al, 2021). Many cases were required to identify such relationships.…”

“…Two exploratory language dimensions related to other forms of complexity were evaluated as well: analytic thinking and readability. Analytic thinking is a proxy for Kahneman's (2011) System 2 thinking (Markowitz, 2022;Seraj et al, 2021), and is calculated as a composite variable of seven function word categories in LIWC (Pennebaker et al, 2014). 7 High scores indicate writers with a formal, concrete, and complex thinking style compared to low scores, which indicate writers with a narrative, dynamic, and simple thinking style.…”

“…Style words, also known as function words, are pervasive in English (Baayen et al, 1995;Tausczik & Pennebaker, 2010) and reflect how people communicate, instead of what they are communicating about (Chung & Pennebaker, 2007). Words such as pronouns (e.g., I, we, her), articles (e.g., a, the), and prepositions (e.g., above, below) link to social and psychological processes including interpersonal interest (Ireland et al, 2011), personality (Ireland & Mehl, 2014), social status (Kacewicz et al, 2014), and psychological distress (Cohn et al, 2004;Markowitz, 2022;Seraj et al, 2021). A recent advancement in psychology of language research is the creation of a single dimension associated with complex thinking, called analytic thinking, which "can be applied to any type of text" (Pennebaker et al, 2014) (p.6), to indicate the formal, impersonal, and complex nature of a communicator's thinking style.…”

Mapping Linguistic Shifts During Psychological Coping With the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…These cognitive processing words suggest that people try to make meaning from their traumatic experiences and re-organize their thoughts into a more coherent and less emotionally disturbing narrative ( Pennebaker & Harber, 1993 ). For instance, Markowitz (2022 , Study 1) found that scientists used more cognitive processing words in writings during the COVID-19 pandemic than before, revealing the academics’ attempts to construct meaning about heightened psychological distress.…”

“…It is difficult to study how cognitive reappraisal unfolds as people are experiencing a traumatic event in a real-world context. Cross-sectional studies using retrospective reports cannot reveal the temporal dynamics ( Markowitz, 2022 ). Longitudinal studies often assess a few time points in a limited period, constraining researchers’ ability to map the precise trajectories of psychological responses in the weeks and months following a traumatic event.…”