The More Who Die, the Less We Care: Evidence from Natural Language Analysis of Online News Articles and Social Media Posts
Corresponding Author
Sudeep Bhatia
Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, PA, USA
Address correspondence to Sudeep Bhatia, Department of Psychology, Solomon Labs, 3720 Walnut St. Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA; bhatiasu@sas.upenn.edu.
Search for more papers by this authorPaul Slovic
Department of Psychology, University of Oregon, and Decision Research Oregon
Wharton Business School, University of Pennsylvania, OR, USA
Search for more papers by this authorHoward Kunreuther
Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, PA, USA
Search for more papers by this authorCorresponding Author
Sudeep Bhatia
Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, PA, USA
Address correspondence to Sudeep Bhatia, Department of Psychology, Solomon Labs, 3720 Walnut St. Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA; bhatiasu@sas.upenn.edu.
Search for more papers by this authorPaul Slovic
Department of Psychology, University of Oregon, and Decision Research Oregon
Wharton Business School, University of Pennsylvania, OR, USA
Search for more papers by this authorHoward Kunreuther
Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, PA, USA
Search for more papers by this authorAbstract
Considerable amount of laboratory and survey-based research finds that people show disproportional compassionate and affective response to the scope of human mortality risk. According to research on “psychic numbing,” it is often the case that the more who die, the less we care. In the present article, we examine the extent of this phenomenon in verbal behavior, using large corpora of natural language to quantify the affective reactions to loss of life. We analyze valence, arousal, and specific emotional content of over 100,000 mentions of death in news articles and social media posts, and find that language shows an increase in valence (i.e., decreased negative affect) and a decrease in arousal when describing mortality of larger numbers of people. These patterns are most clearly reflected in specific emotions of joy and (in a reverse fashion) of fear and anger. Our results showcase a novel methodology for studying affective decision making, and highlight the robustness and real-world relevance of psychic numbing. They also offer new insights regarding the psychological underpinnings of psychic numbing, as well as possible interventions for reducing psychic numbing and overcoming social and psychological barriers to action in the face of the world's most serious threats.
Supporting Information
| Filename | Description |
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| risa13582-sup-0001-SuppMat.docx165.2 KB |
Table A1. Examples of mentions of deaths, randomly selected from the list of texts offered to our human coders. Table A2. Outputs of a linear regression with a quadratic component on the log-number of deaths. Figure A1. Aggregate emotionality of texts in various death categories. Cells are shaded based on the emotionality of the death category for the emotion relative to other death categories for the same emotion. |
Please note: The publisher is not responsible for the content or functionality of any supporting information supplied by the authors. Any queries (other than missing content) should be directed to the corresponding author for the article.
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