Linguistic Markers of Psychological Change Surrounding September 11, 2001
Abstract
The diaries of 1,084 U.S. users of an on-line journaling service were downloaded for a period of 4 months spanning the 2 months prior to and after the September 11 attacks. Linguistic analyses of the journal entries revealed pronounced psychological changes in response to the attacks. In the short term, participants expressed more negative emotions, were more cognitively and socially engaged, and wrote with greater psychological distance. After 2 weeks, their moods and social referencing returned to baseline, and their use of cognitive-analytic words dropped below baseline. Over the next 6 weeks, social referencing decreased, and psychological distancing remained elevated relative to baseline. Although the effects were generally stronger for individuals highly preoccupied with September 11, even participants who hardly wrote about the events showed comparable language changes. This study bypasses many of the methodological obstacles of trauma research and provides a finegrained analysis of the time line of human coping with upheaval.
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Psycholinguistic expressions that signal an individual's underlying psychological state are associated with non-content words, which are rarely consciously regulated.
“Moreover, psycholinguistic expressions that signal an individual ' s underlying psychological state, are associated with non-content words, such as articles and pronouns, which are rarely consciously regulated by the individual and may span a variety of topics directly or indirectly related to a crisis, whether of fl ine (Cohn et al., 2004) or online (Saha and De Choudhury, 2017).”
From Impacts of school shooter drills on the psychological well-being of American K-12 school communities: a social media study (2021) · cites this paper as Cohn et al., 2004
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- Authors
- Cohn, M. A., Mehl, M. R., & Pennebaker, J. W.
- Affiliations
- University of Michigan (US)
- The University of Texas at Austin (US)
- Venue
- Psychological Science
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2004-10
- Volume
- 15
- Issue
- 10
- Pages
- 687-693
- ISSN
- 0956-7976 (ISSN-L)
- 1467-9280
- OpenAlex
- W2145610967
- Cited by
- 808
- References
- 40
- Citations by year
- 2026: 26 · 2025: 47 · 2024: 53 · 2023: 55 · 2022: 79 · 2021: 67 · 2020: 54 · 2019: 64 · 2018: 43 · 2017: 39 · 2016: 27 · 2015: 26 · 2014: 21 · 2013: 28 · 2012: 41
- FWCI
- 19.93
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Psychological Science (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- CLOK (University of Central Lancashire) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institute of Mental Health (R01MH052391, MH52391)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Mental Health via Writing
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Research
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Psychological Well-being and Life Satisfaction
- Keywords
- September 11 attacks, online journaling, psychological change, emotional expression, social referencing, psychological distancing, coping with trauma
- MeSH terms
- Adaptation, Psychological, Adult, Affect, Cognition, Female, Humans, Linguistics, Male, Terrorism
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