When danger strikes: A linguistic tool for tracking America's collective response to threats.

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  • Additional Information
    • Source:
      Publisher: National Academy of Sciences Country of Publication: United States NLM ID: 7505876 Publication Model: Print Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 1091-6490 (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 00278424 NLM ISO Abbreviation: Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A Subsets: MEDLINE
    • Publication Information:
      Original Publication: Washington, DC : National Academy of Sciences
    • Subject Terms:
      Mass Gatherings*; COVID-19/*psychology ; Cyberbullying/*psychology ; Language/*history ; Mass Media/*ethics ; Social Norms/*history; History, 20th Century ; History, 21st Century ; Humans ; Linguistics ; Politics ; SARS-CoV-2/pathogenicity
    • Abstract:
      In today's vast digital landscape, people are constantly exposed to threatening language, which attracts attention and activates the human brain's fear circuitry. However, to date, we have lacked the tools needed to identify threatening language and track its impact on human groups. To fill this gap, we developed a threat dictionary, a computationally derived linguistic tool that indexes threat levels from mass communication channels. We demonstrate this measure's convergent validity with objective threats in American history, including violent conflicts, natural disasters, and pathogen outbreaks such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, the dictionary offers predictive insights on US society's shifting cultural norms, political attitudes, and macroeconomic activities. Using data from newspapers that span over 100 years, we found change in threats to be associated with tighter social norms and collectivistic values, stronger approval of sitting US presidents, greater ethnocentrism and conservatism, lower stock prices, and less innovation. The data also showed that threatening language is contagious. In all, the language of threats is a powerful tool that can inform researchers and policy makers on the public's daily exposure to threatening language and make visible interesting societal patterns across American history.
      Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing interest.
      (Copyright © 2022 the Author(s). Published by PNAS.)
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    • Contributed Indexing:
      Keywords: collective threats; historical change; language; mass communication; socioecology
    • Publication Date:
      Date Created: 20220125 Date Completed: 20220131 Latest Revision: 20220204
    • Publication Date:
      20240628
    • Accession Number:
      PMC8795557
    • Accession Number:
      10.1073/pnas.2113891119
    • Accession Number:
      35074911