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Elevated Use of Absolutist Words Is a Marker of Anxiety, Depression [pdf]
- ihsw2 9y agoOnly a Sith deals in absolutes. [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOhZ5wD6u7A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOhZ5wD6u7A
- macawfish 9y agoSo did the screenwriters intentionally phrase that one in an absolute way? Or is the irony accidental?
- opensourcenews 9y agoI would have written the headline as "In an Absolute State: Elevated Use of Absolutist Words Could Be a Marker Specific to Anxiety, Depression, and Suicidal Ideation" but maybe that's only because I'm in a good mood.
- randcraw 9y agoSo what is persnicketiness a marker of?
- mattgreenrocks 9y agoReading the Internet too much? :) (I kid...sort of, but more poking fun at myself here)
- tjalfi 9y agoThat's a better title than my submission but sadly over the limit for HN titles. I started with the original title of "In an Absolute State: Elevated Use of Absolutist Words Is a Marker Specific to Anxiety, Depression, and Suicidal Ideation" and cut words until it fit.
- linkmotif 9y agoI've been there! Having been there, I've wondered whether this hypothesis is true. Nice to see people attempting to quantify this.
- optimuspaul 9y agoI wonder what it says about me that I when I read "Absolutist" my brain replaced it with "Absurdist" and I got excited and depressed. I even got to the point where I was wondering what some examples of absurdist words were. And then I read it again with a higher font size.
- yorwba 9y agoFor absurdism, you might prefer this article: https://isotropic.org/papers/chicken.pdf https://isotropic.org/papers/chicken.pdf
- nashashmi 9y agoI agree. The bigger question is which came first: 1. Absolutism led to anxiety/depression and was signaled in speech. 2. Anxiety/Depression led people to think absolutely giving rise to absolutist speech. 3. Absolutist speech created anxiety/depression circumstances. I go with number 1.
- abakker 9y agoI would also guess number 1 based on personal observations. It looks like their conclusion highlights that cognitive therapy already tries to treat this kind of thinking, so I'd guess that means they agree with you? I'm happy you made that list.
- dragonwriter 9y agoOr, for completeness: 4. Absolutism and anxiety/depression have some other common cause, but don't cause each other.
- CPLX 9y agoThis rings the most true. I think another way of saying it is that nuanced thinking is a luxury that can only be afforded when there is no imminent crisis. This corresponds pretty well to the whole System 1/2 framework most people have heard about via Daniel Kahneman. Calm considered thinking takes time and resources, so it's not employed when people are in a real, perceived, or chemically or physically induced state of crisis.
- emmelaich 9y agoLack of self-esteem and perception of your value in others eyes can lead to both. If you think you're not valued and your opinions not valued you will tend to add expletives (very, extremely) and absolutes to your language. Of course this can have the opposite effect on the listener. They know to dismiss the speaker (consciously or unconsciously). Similarly I've heard "arguments" from people on particular controversial topics and they have failed to put forward their view. The language is full of absolutely that and idiotic this but I'm still don't know which side of the argument they're on! John Lennon had a quote about this tendency. I've so far failed to find it.
- test6554 9y agoOnly a sith deals in absolutes.
- donquichotte 9y agoHaha, the same phrase came to my mind when I read the title. I love that the phrase itself is also an absolute.
- jandrese 9y agoI thought at first that the phrase was opening up a huge mindblower where Obi-Wan was a Sith. Turns out it was just George's shitty writing.
- xutopia 9y agoFunny thing is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) tackles black and white ways of thinking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_behavioral_therapy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_behavioral_therapy Another article was posted on Hacker News talking about Woebot. It's easy enough to see a pattern in Woebot's discourse and it can help people get out of really tough spots.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- tkahnoski 9y agoFascinating. I'm regularly coaching individuals to avoid absolutist words more as a means so they don't stir the pot with team members. This study points out a correlation that makes me rethink how I approach that advice. It seems like there's a lot of room for understanding how language can impact behavior. There's the colloqualism "Perception is reality" and I guess with CBT the true mechanism is to change the language of a persons internal dialogue thus changing the way someone perceives the world.
- jackhack 9y agoWhat is the goal for avoiding absolutist words? I ask because I would much rather work with someone who is decisive than with someone who avoids judgements and "absolutist words." I see the latter as "wishy-washy." I'm sure that says more about me than them, but I find those who always seek a middle ground to be uninspiring and low-energy.
- drb91 9y agoIn can correlate with lack of ability to think in terms of trade-offs and nuance. "Wishy-washy" seems like a proxy for a better defined characteristic, but I'm not sure what. Indecisive? Ambivalent? You tell me! It is a false dichotomy to portray communication as either absolutist or wishy-washy. You can communicate precisely and confidently without falling back on inaccurate hyperbole, which is often what absolutism is.
- Trumpinator 9y ago"Suicidal" Uh uh. Bigly.
- e40 9y agoA good friend of mine killed himself about 15 years ago. The day before, he used absolutist words like I had never heard him use. So, this idea resonates with me.
- utellme 9y agoDepression and suicide thoughts doesn't come immidiately. Like yesterday everything was cloudless and then boom.
- davymac 9y agoNot OP, but this isn’t always true. Might be true for slow brewing depression, but not for biologically triggered mental changes (triggered by some diseases, some drugs, etc). There’s also the chance that it was a gradual uptick that wasn’t noticed until it was too late. Sorry for your loss OP.
- utellme 9y agoI'm not sure. Drugs and alcohol related things remains drugs and alcohol related. It's not about depression, but altered consciousness. Even diseases doesn't came immidiately, they slowly developing in years, or at least months.
- roflc0ptic 9y agoIf you're curious which absolutist words they picked: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/2167702617747074/suppl_file/Table_S2_Supplemental_Material.pdf http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/21677026177470... Methodology for determining words: "To construct these dictionaries, we initially brainstormed more than 300 absolutist words and 200 nonabsolutist words (including extreme words). Testing on pilot data (control and test groups) revealed that many of the words on these original lists were too obscure to register with sufficient frequency for analysis. Consequently, the original dictionaries were reduced to the most prevalent 22 absolutist words and 43 nonabsolutist words (including 21 extreme words). Although this was based on a mostly arbitrary cutoff, it was intended that the lists be large enough to produce representative dictionary percentages, but small enough to facilitate independent validation by experts. The 22 absolutist words and 43 nonabsolutist words were combined into a single list of 65 words. Five independent expert judges were asked to categorize them as absolute, nonabsolute, and/or extreme. Two of the judges are clinical psychologists from the University of Reading Charlie Waller Institute and three are linguists from the University of Reading School of Clinical Language Sciences. Judges were permitted to place words into more than one category (i.e., extreme and absolute). The agreement between our original categorization of the words (absolutist/nonabsolutist) and that of the judges ranged between 83% and 94%, whereas the interjudge agreement was 96%. Words were considered absolute, extreme, or nonabsolute on the basis of a majority decision by the judges. Three words, anything, need, and needed, were moved from the absolutist dictionary to the nonabsolutist dictionary as they were not categorized as absolute by the majority of judges. All the words on our nonabsolutist dictionary were judged nonabsolute. Judges showed almost no agreement on extreme words, this category was consequently removed from the analysis (collapsed into the nonabsolutist category)."
- anc84 9y agoAs a non-native speaker, what are absolutist words?
- krupan 9y agoOnly, always, never, nobody, everybody, everything, nothing.
- bicubic 9y agoWords which indicate that the author strongly feels that the topic is a black and white issue, and they are on the correct side of the debate. A list of sample words is linked in the top comment. In this context, absolutism basically means the strength of ones convictions as seen in their use of language. The use of absolutes conveys that the author believes their viewpoint applies in all cases.
- pouetpouet 9y agohttp://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/2167702617747074 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/21677026177470... table 2, words like: absolutely all always complete completely constant constantly definitely entire ever every everyone everything full must never nothing totally whole
- anc84 9y agoThanks! Weird that this was not included in the paper itself.
- prepend 9y agoIt’s included in the supplemental material. I was wondering why it wasn’t in the paper itself as I found this the most interesting part and also wanted to read it to see what words to judge the paper’s findings. Glad that vague words weren’t in there.
- tjalfi 9y agoHi, OP here. The actual title of the linked article is "In an Absolute State: Elevated Use of Absolutist Words Is a Marker Specific to Anxiety, Depression, and Suicidal Ideation". Unfortunately this is well over the 80 character limit for HN titles. The journal page at http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/2167702617747074 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/2167702617747074 has the abstract if you don't want to download a PDF. Edited for minor wording changes
- zamazingo 9y agoHi, do you happen to have the list of absolutist and non-absolutists words you have used? I couldn't find it in the publication and the comment below (by slig, which lists the absolutist ones) does not give its source.
- roflc0ptic 9y agoPosted elsewhere in the thread
- romwell 9y agoPage with links to all the tables: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/2167702617747074 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/21677026177470... Here's the list of absolutist words: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/2167702617747074/suppl_file/Table_S2_Supplemental_Material.pdf http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/21677026177470... absolutely all always complete completely constant constantly definitely entire ever every everyone everything full must never nothing totally whole
- mygo 9y agoSomeone should check for the prevalence in these words in the lyrics that people with suicidal ideas listen to the most. Or the music that suicidal people compose. For example Chester of Linkin Park was open and public about his battle with depression / suicidal ideas. Talked about it in interviews, etc. Now I want to know how often these words come up in his music, compared to a control.
- everdev 9y agoThis is helpful. When I hear "always", "never", "all", etc. I tend to tune out or take the remainder of the conversation less seriously as I attribute the absolute language to an issue the speaker hasn't quite fully processed or understood yet. Of course there are exceptions when absolute words are appropriate but they feel like red flags to me.
- hungerstrike 9y agoIt seems like you're taking an absolutist position towards absolutists. I'm not sure how exactly the simple use of the words "always", "never" and "all" indicate to you that a speaker hasn't fully understood their subject. I'd bet that you hear these words all the time without them even registering. There must be something more to it - Is there a certain setting where you hear these words or a certain type of conversation? Surely, you're not talking about simple phrases such as "When I dropped the bag of groceries, all of the eggs fell out and broke." Likewise, I doubt that you're nit-picking on the fact that "always" and "never" are not technically observable by any human. My best guess is that you're using some other unstated conversational cues that have gone unmentioned here.
- jpfed 9y ago>It seems like you're taking an absolutist position towards absolutists. Nope, parent said they "tend to" and "of course there are exceptions".
- hungerstrike 9y agoThe definition of "tend to" is regularly or frequently behave in a particular way or have a certain characteristic, which is why I said "it seems like..." instead of "you are". Anyway, it was kind of tongue in cheek and the main bit of my comment is the set of questions about how these conversational cues actually work.
- prepend 9y agoI understood you were trying to be wry, but you were still incorrect. OP avoided absolute terms in their statement. The example of “I broke all the eggs” is best used to describe when they all broke and had to be thrown away. I think it’s harder to understand than “I broke most of the eggs.” Etc etc If it’s any consolation, I thought your expansion of the comment was interesting and your curiosity helps me better understand the overall thread.
- odammit 9y agoI have always though a complete analysis of the entire list of absolutist words would be beneficial to everyone. People are constantly using these words without totally understanding how they sound to others. This paper is full of interesting statistics that all people must be made aware of. Now that there is a link to suicide and depression nothing could be more important than sharing this with your whole network, every person. I absolutely recommend reading the paper in full. It will definitely change everything about the way you speak. I’ll completely change the way I speak and never ever use these words again. Well, except “constant” which I have to use to refer to software constants.
- asimpletune 9y agoI see what you’re doing...
- nixpulvis 9y agoWe all must only hope.
- swayvil 9y agoho ho ho
- eberkund 9y agoPlease seek professional help as soon as possible! Remember, it will get better.
- DataWorker 9y agoIt always does.
- flashmob 9y agoAfter reading this, also checked my writing for Absolutist words, and also will try to consciously avoid them, would be very annoying to see someone replying with "Please seek professional help as soon as possible!" ;-)
- 9y ago
- zerostar07 9y agobad news for 90% of internet population
- drharby 9y agoPoor Ani :(
- zerr 9y agoI wonder what the avoidance of absolutist words indicates.
- jgtrosh 9y agoSuccess in good quality HN comments ?
- wccrawford 9y agoConstant waffling and failure to commit.
- zerr 9y agoI don't think expressions in words translate that directly into actions - you can commit but express/explain it diplomatically.
- auggierose 9y agoInteresting. So what does that mean for logicians and mathematicians?
- igravious 9y agoWell, everything is context and situation specific–isn't it?
- jandrese 9y agoInteresting to contrast this with certain religious and political leaders who see "equivalencey" as a character weakness and that good and just people will not be conflicted and you can draw a sharp line between the good and evil people in the world.
- rwnspace 9y agoWell I never.
- ignoramceisblis 9y agoBut then how would mass media for-profit corporations help to divide and conquer?
- ElijahLynn 9y agoThis is confirmed by research in the book Learned Optimism (great read for depression).
- espeed 9y agoDefinitely. "Never say never. Always give it your all. It's all or nothing." Everyone constantly says these things all of the time, but it's totally untenable. Besides being harmful, it's completely cliche. It's time everyone comes to terms with it. It's the subtle things that kill ya. Everything must be reexamined and reworked -- a complete and full examination of our entire vocabulary -- every jot and tittle. A massive undertaking yes, but we must. Let's face it, we need whole-scale change. Change is the only constant, and it's now or never. We must all pledge to absolutely never ever say these things again. Ever.
- bostonpete 9y agoodammit beat you to this joke by about 2 hours.
- espeed 9y agoOh well, dammit. I see that now. It's a zero-sum game, and in first-to-market, winner takes all. Time to pivot.
- Noos 9y agoI can't agree with this. I don't think scraping specific forums for a small dictionary list of words can be an accurate marker of depression, especially when those forums overlap with your control ones; asthma, cancer, and ptsd sufferers would also suffer depression and anxiety as well, and it's hard to say those would be linked to word usage. It feels more like they had an idea and constructed an experiment to bolster it, considering they have no way to verify what the actual rates of depression and anxiety are apart from posting in that forum, nor any way to take into account lurkers and non-posting participants, who make the majority of a forum's inhabitants.
- tritium 9y agoI can't find the dictionaries they used. It's hard to develop any intuition about the utility of research like this, without the actual dictionaries they applied analysis to. Are the word lists public information? Why or why not? Are there links to the word lists?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ssivark 9y agoAnother possible illustration of this correlation is the overwhelming displacement of nuance in public discourse over the last decade (eg: absolutist clickbait headlines targeting niche internet audiences), and the growing atmosphere of desperation. It's difficult to pick a definite causal direction, as it seems that each one amplifies the other in turn--a vicious cycle.
- haffi112 9y agoI think that absolutist thinking has something to do with social signalling and interpretation thereof. Someone who thinks in an absolutist manner might be more likely to jump to conclusions based on vague evidence instead of collecting more observations before passing judgement. Today with social media, instant communication and expectation to be answered immediately the absence of a like from a friend has the potential to be devastating. It's as if the observer is doing bayesian inference where his prior is: "everything is either good or evil". With that prior they can never assign probability mass to hypotheses/explanations which lie somewhere in-between. Furthermore, by reacting to their interpretation I suspect that they are more likely to create the circumstances that lead them later to confirm that they where right which then might further sharpen their prior (if it wasn't already extreme in one way or another).
- jackhack 9y agoCurious. Wasn't Steve Jobs somewhat infamous for classifying everything as either "the greatest thing ever!" or "shit"? Jobs as Bayesian classifier! Depending on the corpus, that could be very amusing.
- tonyedgecombe 9y agoThat was just marketing, every thing Apple does is great, everything the competition does is shit. He was very quick with his quips about the competition.
- jackhack 9y agoUnfortunately, he was this way with even his trusted inner circle of developers and engineers on the Macintosh project, NeXT, etc. He was well known for this binary trait; he could shower with praise, or explode in intense criticism without regard to feelings (ticking quite a few DSM-IV boxes in the process, no doubt!)
- otakucode 9y agoI could see where you might draw that conclusion, but I think it more likely that the two things simply aren't correlated at all. I use absolutist language constantly, but it is more along the lines of "strong beliefs, held lightly." It is generally quite useful to get people to challenge your statements if you've making them in a sort of absolutist manner, and then you get to find the difficulties and nooks and crannies.
- fny 9y agoThey're arguing that a jump from 1% to 2% of total speech is enough to tell if someone is anxious or depressed: https://imgur.com/a/Eu5sR https://imgur.com/a/Eu5sR While that might be statistically significant, it's practically useless. How on earth can anyone even perceive this day to day? Also, there's a lot of potential for the results to be drowned out by bias in the study design and other confounding factors. I really don't think the evidence supports the hypothesis in any meaningful way.
- dragonwriter 9y ago> While that might be statistically significant, it's practically useless. How on earth can anyone even perceive this day to day? An always-on, always-on-hand AI assistant might do it fairly easily.
- buttscicles 9y agoAlso Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc. Sites and apps with lots of user generated text
- nerfhammer 9y agodifference of 1% to 2% = twice as often. Suggests trying to use those words half as frequently. If you see yourself using one of them, flip a coin and leave it be if it lands on tails or reconsider it if it lands on heads. (insert usual caveats about direction of causality here)
- otakucode 9y agoHehe. I find using 'absolutist' words to be some of the greatest simple joys of life! Hyperbole and absurdism are high art, high comedy, and the best way to explore cultural conceptual spaces. It works for science and other approaches as well, as most novelty is usually found at the fringes and where assumptions break down.
- kls 9y agoThe flip side to this is that it seems to me many leaders of note abuse these words constantly. I would love to see the study of absolutist words relationship to the ability of leaders to gain followers. Most leaders such as Churchill spoke with heavy use of absolutist words.
- ShabbosGoy 9y agoNot a coincidence either. Depending on how they are delivered, these words can either be empowering or disempowering with respect to how the speaker is using them.
- wjn0 9y agoVery interesting. I wish there was more background on absolutist thinking and mental health. Specifically, is the relationship between absolutist thinking and, say, depression, Whorfian, in the sense that the language used day-to-day impacts their mental health? Or is it symptomatic? My gut says a combination of both.
- gerbilly 9y agoThe Buddha patiently answered most people's questions, but there were some he refused to answer at all, saying that they should be put aside. Many of these were questions about absolutes: Is the world eternal? Is the world finite? Is the self identical with the body? Does the Buddha exist after death? In fact in the buddhist path one goal is to see how everything† is impermanent and dependent on conditions for its existence. †Everything but nirvana.
- HumanDrivenDev 9y agoOne thing I am sorta, kind of, sometimes realising is that like - if you preface what you want to say, maybe with a lot of what are potentially unsure phrases, that people - in my opinion, I'm not an expert - won't take you, in certain situations, as seriously. Brash people who lay things out in absolutes are listened to and respected more. I always suffered under the delusion that people who talked like that must really know what they're talking about and done their research - why else would they speak with such confidence? It took me a long time to realise they don't know anymore than I do, and sometimes less. I can now spot a lot of well-respected people in tech - who are admired widely and quoted endlessly - who are stunningly ignorant of some of the things they talk about. It's also made me realise that appearance and accent matter a huge amount in tech. If a bald Indian man invented a derivative language and coined a bunch of catch-phrases and neologisms about complexity - he'd be met with memes and derision. But if an American man with thick luscious hair and an educated coastal accent does it, everyone takes him seriously.
- n42 9y ago> who are stunningly ignorant of some of the things they talk about what interests me is that you say "some of" (I have had the same experience). where I struggle is trying to pay attention when these people actually know what they are talking about. it becomes so difficult to know what is bullshit and what is real, and I often miss out on valuable insight because I can't trust what they say 50% of the time.
- lawn 9y agoExactly. There's an old school programmer at work who founded the company, created his own programming language a big application is running on and is widely considered to be a programmer guru. He has some really strong opinions about programming, some I agree with and others I find difficult to swallow, but he's also firmly against vaccines, believes his kung fu is superior to the MMA in UFC and is generally very positive to pseudo medicine of different kinds. I find it very difficult to take his programming advice seriously when he follows by saying vaccines are anti science.
- stcredzero 9y agoI wonder if belief in authoritarian ideologies and authoritarian tendencies are markers of anxiety, depression, and mental illness?
- utellme 9y agoYou can't measure even true level of political support of such regimes, so it's unlikely, but interesting question though.
- imgabe 9y agoThis says a lot about the sort of clickbait headlines that are all over Facebook and Twitter: "This photo of a puppy eating ice cream IS EVERYTHING" such and such RESTORED/DESTROYED MY FAITH IN HUMANITY blah blah blah IS EVERYTHING YOU'VE EVER WANTED It's honestly exhausting just to read it.
- utellme 9y agoYou should join to some political discussion club then, just to compare levels.
- stareatgoats 9y agoInteresting. So far my initial reaction to overuse of absolutist words has been to regard the person as relatively incapable of accurate depiction of reality, as absolutist descriptions are usually simply dead wrong. I might start taking a more empathetic approach I think.
- pessimizer 9y agoComfort and hope often live in doubts, like doubting that cancer will ultimately kill you, doubting that skipping that safety check will hurt anyone, doubting that your wife will actually leave if she catches you doing what she told you not to do, or doubting that you'll get caught during this burglary. Lacking these doubts may leave one with anxiety and depression, but says nothing about whether these doubts are sound or unsound.
- stevenh 9y agoThe way HN is wholeheartedly glomming onto this is just nauseating. Please don't tell me we're going to start a whole new wave of language-shaming because someone someone linked to an implicit newspeak advocacy PDF once.
- boneheadmed 9y agoAre you absolutely sure about this?