Language left behind on social media exposes the emotional and cognitive costs of a romantic breakup.

Using archived social media data, the language signatures of people going through breakups were mapped. Text analyses were conducted on 1,027,541 posts from 6,803 Reddit users who had posted about their breakups. The posts include users' Reddit history in the 2 y surrounding their breakups across the various domains of their life, not just posts pertaining to their relationship. Language markers of an impending breakup were evident 3 mo before the event, peaking on the week of the breakup and returning to baseline 6 mo later. Signs included an increase in I-words, we-words, and cognitive processing words (characteristic of depression, collective focus, and the meaning-making process, respectively) and drops in analytic thinking (indicating more personal and informal language). The patterns held even when people were posting to groups unrelated to breakups and other relationship topics. People who posted about their breakup for longer time periods were less well-adjusted a year after their breakup compared to short-term posters. The language patterns seen for breakups replicated for users going through divorce (n = 5,144; 1,109,867 posts) or other types of upheavals (n = 51,357; 11,081,882 posts). The cognitive underpinnings of emotional upheavals are discussed using language as a lens.

The psychological impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on business leadership.

The COVID-19 pandemic had a profound impact on business leadership, specifically on chief executive officers (CEOs). To document the psychological impacts of the pandemic on corporate leadership, this study analyzed the language of CEOs during company quarterly earnings calls (N = 19,536) one year before and after the onset of the pandemic. Following the start of lockdowns, CEOs exhibited significant language shifts. Analytic thinking declined, and their language became less technical and more personal and intuitive. CEOs also showed signs of increased cognitive load as they grappled with the pandemic's impact on their business practices. The study observed a substantial decrease in collective-focused language (we-usage) among CEOs, indicative of disconnection from their companies. Concurrently, there was an increase in self-focused (I-usage) language, suggesting heightened preoccupation among business leaders. The observed language changes reflect the unique effect of the pandemic on CEOs, which had some notable differences compared to the general population. This study sheds light on how the COVID-19 pandemic influenced business leaders' psychological states and decision-making strategies-processes that have a substantial impact on a company's performance. The findings underscore the importance of language data in understanding large-scale societal events.

An inclusive, real-world investigation of persuasion in language and verbal behavior.

Linguistic features of a message necessarily shape its persuasive appeal. However, studies have largely examined the effect of linguistic features on persuasion in isolation and do not incorporate properties of language that are often involved in real-world persuasion. As such, little is known about the key verbal dimensions of persuasion or the relative impact of linguistic features on a message's persuasive appeal in real-world social interactions. We collected large-scale data of online social interactions from a social media website in which users engage in debates in an attempt to change each other's views on any topic. Messages that successfully changed a user's views are explicitly marked by the user themselves. We simultaneously examined linguistic features that have been previously linked with message persuasiveness between persuasive and non-persuasive messages. Linguistic features that drive persuasion fell along three central dimensions: structural complexity, negative emotionality, and positive emotionality. Word count, lexical diversity, reading difficulty, analytical language, and self-references emerged as most essential to a message's persuasive appeal: messages that were longer, more analytic, less anecdotal, more difficult to read, and less lexically varied had significantly greater odds of being persuasive. These results provide a more parsimonious understanding of the social psychological pathways to persuasion as it operates in the real world through verbal behavior. Our results inform theories that address the role of language in persuasion, and provide insight into effective persuasion in digital environments.

Climate Denial Fuels Climate Change Discussions More Than Local Climate-Related Disasters.

Most scientists agree that climate change is the largest existential threat of our time. Despite the magnitude of the threat, surprisingly few climate-related discussions take place on social media. What factors drive online discussions about climate change? In this study, we examined the occurrence of Reddit discussions around three types of climate-related events: natural disasters (e.g., hurricanes, wildfires), political events (i.e., 2016 United States Presidential election), and policy events (i.e., United States' withdrawal from Paris Climate Agreement, release of IPCC report). The objective was to understand how different types of events influence collective action as measured by discussions of climate change. Six large US cities were selected based on the occurrence of at least one locally-relevant natural disaster since 2014. Posts (N = 4.4 million) from subreddits of the selected cities were collected to obtain a six-month period before and after local natural disasters as well as climate-related political and policy events (which applied equally to all cities). Climate change discussions increased significantly for all three types of events, with the highest discussion during the 2016 elections. Further, discussions returned to baseline levels within 2 months following natural disasters and policy events but continued at elevated rates for up to 4 months following the 2016 elections. The findings suggest that collective discussions on climate change are driven more by political leaders' controversial positions than life-threatening local natural disasters themselves. Implications for collective action are discussed.