Positive Emotional Language in the Final Words Spoken Directly Before Execution

Frontiers in Psychology
Sarah Hirschmüller, Boris Egloff

Abstract

How do individuals emotionally cope with the imminent real-world salience of mortality? DeWall and Baumeister as well as Kashdan and colleagues previously provided support that an increased use of positive emotion words serves as a way to protect and defend against mortality salience of one's own contemplated death. Although these studies provide important insights into the psychological dynamics of mortality salience, it remains an open question how individuals cope with the immense threat of mortality prior to their imminent actual death. In the present research, we therefore analyzed positivity in the final words spoken immediately before execution by 407 death row inmates in Texas. By using computerized quantitative text analysis as an objective measure of emotional language use, our results showed that the final words contained a significantly higher proportion of positive than negative emotion words. This emotional positivity was significantly higher than (a) positive emotion word usage base rates in spoken and written materials and (b) positive emotional language use with regard to contemplated death and attempted or actual suicide. Additional analyses showed that emotional positivity in final statements was associated w...Continue Reading

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Citations

Jun 2, 2017·Psychological Science·Amelia GoransonKurt Gray
Mar 27, 2018·QJM : Monthly Journal of the Association of Physicians·S R Foley, B D Kelly
Jan 26, 2018·Frontiers in Psychology·Jung Yul KwonMichael E W Varnum
Dec 12, 2018·Cognitive, Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience·Anne S BerryMing Hsu
Jun 6, 2018·Frontiers in Psychology·Sarah Hirschmüller, Boris Egloff

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Software Mentioned

Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count ( LIWC
LIWC
SST

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