
Elevated Use of Absolutist Words Is a Marker of Anxiety, Depression [pdf] - tjalfi
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2167702617747074
======
odammit
I 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.

~~~
igravious
You jest but absolutely every fractious argument I have starts with the words,
“You always […]”, every such argument quickly turns sours, and inevitably
without fail leads to me becoming depressed.

For the love of God is it so difficult to say, “You nearly always […]” or “You
almost always “…”] or some non-absolutist variant? Are all the people I argue
with mentally unwell?

~~~
rco8786
I go with “you often”. Or even better, rephrase the entire thing so that it
can start with “it seems like” to avoid the accusatory tone altogether.

You never do the dishes vs You often don’t help out with the dishes vs It
seems like I’m always the one doing the dishes.

~~~
kqr
vs "I often feel like I'm the only one doing the dishes"

vs "I have gotten the impression you like helping out, but I also noticed that
sometimes you don't do the dishes even when you have good opportunities to. Is
something wrong? Can I help you get started with that in some way?"

I strongly prefer the latter. More verbose, yes, but it also acknowledges the
other person does help, it does not assume malice, and it anchors a strong
desire to help out. Which is ehat we want!

------
tjalfi
Hi, 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
Hi, 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.

~~~
romwell
Page with links to all the tables:
[http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/21677026177470...](http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/2167702617747074)

Here's the list of absolutist words:
[http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/21677026177470...](http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/2167702617747074/suppl_file/Table_S2_Supplemental_Material.pdf)

absolutely

all

always

complete

completely

constant

constantly

definitely

entire

ever

every

everyone

everything

full

must

never

nothing

totally

whole

~~~
mygo
Someone 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.

------
xutopia
Funny 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.

~~~
tkahnoski
Fascinating. 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
What 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
In 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.

~~~
tkahnoski
Fear of conflict. Fear of mistakes.

------
roflc0ptic
If you're curious which absolutist words they picked:
[http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/21677026177470...](http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/2167702617747074/suppl_file/Table_S2_Supplemental_Material.pdf)

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)."

~~~
slig
List of absolutist words:

    
    
        absolutely
        all
        always
        complete
        completely
        constant
        constantly
        definitely
        entire
        ever
        every
        everyone
        everything
        full
        must
        never
        nothing
        totally
        whole

~~~
_greim_
Is it just me, or has "definitely" become sort of subtly _indefinite_ in
modern language? Consider:

    
    
        A) We should throw a party for him.
        B) We should definitely throw a party for him.
    
        A) We should get together soon.
        B) We should definitely get together soon.
    

In each case, it seems like A is a call to action, whereas B is (for lack of a
better term) more of a social expression which doesn't necessitate actually
planning something right this moment. Or maybe I'm overthinking it.

~~~
romwell
Yeah, I think the authors should definitely consider this.

------
HumanDrivenDev
One 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
> 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
Exactly.

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.

~~~
cabaalis
Wasn't there a very respected gentleman who has passed on in the past decade,
who ran a large company we've all heard of, and who also just happened to
believe greatly in pseudo medicine (maybe not vaccines in particular) and odd
diets?

What I'm saying is, it takes all kinds to make a village. The person you're
talking about's beliefs on vaccines are unlikely to affect many. His genius at
programming, however, is.

------
espeed
Definitely. "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
odammit beat you to this joke by about 2 hours.

~~~
espeed
Oh well, dammit. I see that now. It's a zero-sum game, and in first-to-market,
winner takes all. Time to pivot.

------
haffi112
I 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
Curious. 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
That 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
Unfortunately, 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!)

------
nashashmi
I 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.

~~~
dragonwriter
Or, for completeness:

4\. Absolutism and anxiety/depression have some other common cause, but don't
cause each other.

~~~
CPLX
This 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.

------
everdev
This 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
It 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
>It seems like you're taking an absolutist position towards absolutists.

Nope, parent said they "tend to" and "of course there are exceptions".

~~~
hungerstrike
The 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
I 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.

------
e40
A 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
Depression and suicide thoughts doesn't come immidiately. Like yesterday
everything was cloudless and then boom.

~~~
davymac
Not 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
I'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.

------
kls
The 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
Not 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.

------
jandrese
Interesting 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.

------
Noos
I 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.

------
opensourcenews
I 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
So what is persnicketiness a marker of?

~~~
mattgreenrocks
Reading the Internet too much? :)

(I kid...sort of, but more poking fun at myself here)

------
pessimizer
Comfort 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.

------
linkmotif
I've been there! Having been there, I've wondered whether this hypothesis is
true. Nice to see people attempting to quantify this.

------
test6554
Only a sith deals in absolutes.

~~~
donquichotte
Haha, the same phrase came to my mind when I read the title. I love that the
phrase itself is also an absolute.

~~~
jandrese
I 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.

------
anc84
As a non-native speaker, what are absolutist words?

~~~
pouetpouet
[http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/21677026177470...](http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/2167702617747074)
table 2, words like:

absolutely all always complete completely constant constantly definitely
entire ever every everyone everything full must never nothing totally whole

~~~
anc84
Thanks! Weird that this was not included in the paper itself.

~~~
prepend
It’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.

------
fny
They'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
> 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
Also Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc. Sites and apps with lots of user
generated text

------
zerr
I wonder what the avoidance of absolutist words indicates.

~~~
wccrawford
Constant waffling and failure to commit.

~~~
zerr
I don't think expressions in words translate that directly into actions - you
can commit but express/explain it diplomatically.

------
ssivark
Another 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.

------
stcredzero
I wonder if belief in authoritarian ideologies and authoritarian tendencies
are markers of anxiety, depression, and mental illness?

~~~
utellme
You can't measure even true level of political support of such regimes, so
it's unlikely, but interesting question though.

------
otakucode
Hehe. 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.

------
gerbilly
The 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.

------
wjn0
Very 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.

------
optimuspaul
I 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
For absurdism, you might prefer this article:
[https://isotropic.org/papers/chicken.pdf](https://isotropic.org/papers/chicken.pdf)

------
stareatgoats
Interesting. 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.

------
imgabe
This 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
You should join to some political discussion club then, just to compare
levels.

------
tritium
I 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?

~~~
slig
Someone posted a link to a PDF right here on the comments.

~~~
tritium
I don't think it was there at the time, when I replied.

------
ElijahLynn
This is confirmed by research in the book Learned Optimism (great read for
depression).

------
stevenh
The 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.

------
auggierose
Interesting. So what does that mean for logicians and mathematicians?

~~~
igravious
Well, everything is context and situation specific–isn't it?

------
zerostar07
bad news for 90% of internet population

~~~
kbutler
Absolutely the worst news for everybody on the internet!

------
ignoramceisblis
But then how would mass media for-profit corporations help to divide and
conquer?

------
boneheadmed
Are you absolutely sure about this?

------
rwnspace
Well I never.

------
ihsw2
Only a Sith deals in absolutes. [1]

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOhZ5wD6u7A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOhZ5wD6u7A)

~~~
macawfish
So did the screenwriters intentionally phrase that one in an absolute way? Or
is the irony accidental?

