April 29, 2014
TODAY’S BREAKING NEWS
EMPATHY AND EGOTISM IN NEW YORK TIMES
OBITUARIES
By: Sara Konrath
Acknowledgements –
This research was done in collaboration with an
undergraduate student, Muneer Khalid.
Grants from the John Templeton Foundation,
via the Psychology of Character (Wake Forest
University) and directly from the sponsor
(Grant # 47993).
$1.00
BACKGROUND
•Empathy, egotism, and health
•Empathy  no research on longevity of empathic
people, but may be linked (e.g. volunteering, giving
support) (Konrath & Brown, 2013; Konrath, 2013)
•Egotism  self-focus linked to higher stress
responses, higher risk of cardiovascular disease, and
cardiovascular-related death (Konrath & Bonadonna, 2014; Reinhard et al,
2012; Scherwitz et al)
•Measurement
•Self-report scales most common  limitations
•Some content coding (e.g. I, me, mine), but rare
BACKGROUND
•Personality “at a distance”
•Can measure trait-like tendencies of people who are
not otherwise accessible, e.g. politicians, deceased, etc.
•Human coding:
•e.g. power, affiliation, achievement motives
•Computer coding:
•e.g. count first person singular (I, me) vs first
person plural (we, us) pronouns
•Relevant study:
•People whose autobiographical texts had more social
words lived longer (Pressman & Cohen, 2007)
BACKGROUND
•Obituaries as a data source
•‘That special form of life after death’
•Summaries of career and character
•Some prior research examining gender differences, and
also in type and age of death based on occupation
•Yet none that we know of assess traits
•Obvious sampling problems
•High profile / famous, more men, etc.
•Can still be helpful for theory-building / hypothesis
generation in relatively undeveloped literatures and
difficult to study topics
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
•Are empathy-related and egotism-related words linked to
age of death in obituaries?
•Are empathy-related and egotism-related words linked to
cause of death in obituaries?
•Do people from different occupational categories have
different empathy-related and egotism-related words in
their obituaries?
METHOD
•Collected full texts of all obituaries in 2012 from the New
York Times.
•Developed list of empathy-related and egotism-related
words.
•Computerized coding via Linguistic Inquiry Word Count
Program (LIWC).
•Also coded by an individual for “subjective kindness.”
•Recorded date, age, and cause of death, as well as
occupation.
METHOD: LIWC CODING
e.g. empathy words
car*
charit*
cooperat*
courtesy
diversity
emotional
empath*
endear*
forgive*
friend*
genero*
giv*
grace
help*
hold
hug
humanitarian
humanity
interdepend*
justice
kind*
love
loving
oblig*
patient
philanthrop*
protect*
provid*
rapport
reasonable
rights
sensitive
serv*
sincer*
sympath*
trust
volunteer*
warm*
e.g. egotism words
aggress*
anger
angry
attack*
boast*
callous
critical
criticize
desert*
ego*
elite
exploit*
fight
forc*
grudge
hate
hit
ignor*
impatient
independ*
insensitive
pride
proud
purg*
quarrel*
rude
sarcas*
scoff
self
selfish
supremac*
take
unemotional
unkind
RESULTS: DESCRIPTIVES
•Total N=484 (85 female, 399 male)
•Mean age of death = 81.31 years (+4.17 years than average
lifespan)
 Range=age 33 to 111
•No gender differences in average age of death,
F(1,482)=.24, p=.62
•This is because women died at about the average age (81
years), but men lived about 5 years longer than usual
•Gender: LIWC empathy: ns
• but males > females in egotism words
•females > males in subjective kindness
RESULTS: AGE OF DEATH
•LIWC empathy: ns
•LIWC egotism: ns
•Subjective kindness: associated with longer life, r=.12,
p=.01
•Conclusion: Only subjective ratings predict longevity
•But need interrater reliability ratings
RESULTS: CAUSE OF DEATH
Type of Death
Cardiovascular
Cancer
Infection
Alzheimer’s /
Dementia
Injury
(intentional or not)
“Natural causes”
Other / unknown
Frequency
16.3%
23.8%
6.2%
3.7%
Average Age
80.15
74.97
85.13
83.67
3.7%
63.28
32.0%
14.3%
88.70
79.06
RESULTS: CAUSE OF DEATH
•Logistic regressions predicting the likelihood of dying
from cardiovascular disease or cancer
•Cardiovascular disease:
•LIWC Egotism: β=.92, p=.05, OR=2.52 [1.00,6.34]
•LIWC Empathy: β=.09, p=.77, OR=1.10 [.60, 2.01]
•Subjective Kindness: β=-.35, p=.03, OR=.71 [.52, .96]
•Cancer:
•Egotism: β=-.73, p=.15, OR=.48 [.18, 1.29]
•Empathy: β=.25, p=.26, OR=1.28 [.77, 2.14]
•Subjective Kindness: β=-.02, p=.88, OR=.98 [.77,
1.25]
RESULTS: OCCUPATION
Occupation
Silent Arts
Frequency
24.4%
Average Age
80.60
24.2%
79.75
17.6%
83.95
12.8%
85.32
9.5%
79.46
7.2%
4.3%
77.46
82.00
(writing, photography, visual art)
Entertainment
(acting, dancing, theater, TV host,
comedy)
Public Service
(politics, military, law, religion,
activism)
Scholar
(historian, economist, scientist,
engineer, educator)
Business
(CEO, entrepreneur)
Sports
Medicine
(doctor, psychologist, dentist)
Z-score
RESULTS: OCCUPATION
DISCUSSION
•Overview of results
•Age: subjective kindness and longevity
•Cause: LIWC egotism predicts higher cardiovascular,
subjective kindness predicts lower
•Occupation: Entertainers / sports have most egotistical
profile
•Implications
•Limited work on empathic / egotistical traits and age
or cause of mortality
•Limited work on trait-like tendencies in obituaries
•Creating a computerized dictionary for other
researchers to use
DISCUSSION: LIMITATIONS
•Obituary descriptions may not represent actual traits of
individuals
•Limitations inherent to acontextual computer coding,
e.g. “He was not very caring”
•Obituaries in a prestigious national newspaper do not
represent general population
•Issues of causality
•Third variables such as socioeconomic status may help
to explain the results
DISCUSSION: FUTURE DIRECTIONS
•Currently: Finishing 2011 obituary data collection
•Future: Other coding
•e.g. Implicit motives: power, affiliation, achievement
•Refine LIWC empathy and egotism dictionaries so that
they can be applied to other types of text
•Could be helpful for measuring personality traits “at a
distance”
•e.g. Validate with high and low empathy groups
THANK YOU
Questions or comments?