Positive Emotional Language in the Final Words Spoken Directly Before Execution

ORIGINAL RESEARCH

published: 13 January 2016

doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01985

Edited by:

M. Brent Donnellan,

Texas A&M University, US A

Reviewed by:

Michael E. W. Varnum,

Arizona State University, USA

Jiyoung Park,

University of Massachusetts,

Amherst, USA

*Correspondence:

Sarah Hirschmüller

hirschmu@uni-mainz.de

Specialty section:

This article was submitted to

Personality and Social Psychology,

a section of the journal

Frontiers in Psychology

Received: 17 August 2015

Accepted: 12 December 2015

Published: 13 January 2016

Citation:

Hirschmüller S and Egloff B (2016)

Positive Emotional Language

in the Final Words Spoken Directly

Before Execution.

Front. Psychol. 6:1985.

doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01985

Positive Emotional Language in the

Final Words Spoken Directly Before

Execution

Sarah Hirschmüller

and Boris Egloff

Department of Psychology, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Mainz, Germany

How do individuals emotionally cope with the imminent real-world salience of mortality?

DeWall and Baumeister as well as Kashdan and colleagues previously provided

support that an increased use of positive emotion words serves as a way to protect

and defend against mortality salience of one’s own contemplated death. Although

these studies provide important insights into the psychological dynamics of mortality

salience, it remains an open question how individuals cope with the immense threat

of mortality prior to their imminent actual death. In the present research, we therefor e

analyzed positivity in the ﬁnal words spoken immediately before execution by 407

death row inmates in Texas. By using computerized quantitative text analysis as an

objective measure of emotional language use, our r esults showed that the ﬁnal words

contained a signiﬁcantly higher proportion of positive than negative emotion words. This

emotional positivity was signiﬁcantly higher than (a) positive emotion word usage base

rates in spoken and written materials and (b) positive emotional language use with

regard to contemplated death and attempted or actual suicide. Additional analyses

showed that emotional positivity in ﬁnal statements was associated with a greater

frequency of language use that was indicative of self-references, social orientation, and

present-oriented time focus as well as with fewer instances of cognitive-processing,

past-oriented, and death-related word use. Taken together, our ﬁndings offer new

insights into how individuals cope with the imminent real-world salience of mortality.

Keywords: mortality salience, language use, quantitative text analysis, emotional positivity, terror management

INTRODUCTION

Final words written or spoken shortly before death have fascinated people and have been collected

in writing for a long time (e.g., Marvin, 1901; Brahms, 2010). Anything but banal word use when

confronting death can oﬀer researchers valuable insights into how people cope with existential

threats and the human psyche in general (Pennebaker et al., 2003). Hence, ﬁnal words in the form of

rehearsed or impromptu sayings spoken by a dying person can reveal how individuals emotionally

regulate the salience of imminent mortality. Here, we analyzed emotional language use in the ﬁnal

statements of executed Texas death row inmates and compared our ﬁndings with rates of positive

emotion word use in general and in contexts involving contemplated death and attempted or actual

death by suicide.

Intuitively, one might imagine that thoughts of one’s own death should evoke fear and anxiety

as death may be associated with a broad range of frightening aspects (i.e., pain, loss of loved ones,

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Hirschmüller and Egloff Positive Emotional Language Use in Final Words

unfulﬁlled goals; e.g., Niemeyer and Moore, 1994; Florian and

Mikulincer, 1997). Psychological denial of death to escape

the anxious awareness of our mortality constitutes one of

the most basic drives in individual behavior (Becker, 1973).

According to Terror Management Theory (TMT; Greenberg

et al., 1986), individuals employ a wide range of cognitive and

behavioral eﬀorts to regulate the anxiety that mortality salience

evokes (Greenberg et al., 1997; Pyszczynski et al., 2004). These

psychological defense mechanisms are aimed at maintaining self-

esteem and acquiring meaning in life (Pyszczynski et al., 1999).

Empirical ﬁndings by DeWall and Baumeister (2007)

suggest that an automatic orienting toward emotionally positive

information and associations serves as a way to protect

and defend against mortality salience. In a series of studies,

the authors showed that thinking about death (vs. thinking

about dental pain) activated a non-conscious emotional coping

response that was counterintuitive to the overt emotional distress

one might expect, such that participants completed ambiguous

word stems with relatively more positive emotion words and

favored positive emotional associations in judgments of word

similarity. Also, ﬁndings by Kashdan et al. (2014) indicated that

such a shift toward the use of positive emotion words may be

involved in regulating the fear of death: writings of individuals

contemplating death (vs. people thinking about dental pain,

uncertainty, or meaninglessness) showed an increased use of

positive emotional language.

Although these studies oﬀer important insights into the

psychological dynamics of mortality salience, they are limited

by the fact that the situation created by letting university

students contemplate death in a standardized lab situation

necessarily diﬀers in several aspects from real life and real death.

Consequently, in an attempt to better understand the feelings

of individuals prior to their imminent actual death, researchers

have conducted content analyses of suicide notes (Tuckman et al.,

1959; Handelman and Lester, 2007) and other writings left behind

after suicides (e.g., diaries, poetry; Stirman and Pennebaker,

2001; Pennebaker and Stone, 2004). Tuckman et al. (1959)

reported that the emotional content of 165 analyzed suicide notes

was surprisingly positive and contained expressions of gratitude

and aﬀection. Similarly, research has shown that notes from

completed suicides contained more positive emotional language

than notes from attempted suicides (Handelman and Lester,

2007) and that writings that occurred temporally closer to death

were higher in positive emotional language use (Pennebaker and

Stone, 2004).

Without any doubt, the psychological “terror” felt in the

situation of self-decided death by suicide is extreme. However,

there may be one situation where individuals face an even

greater amount of terror: directly before death by execution. This

situation is characterized by a complete absence of controllability

and a maximal subjection to powerful others who have the right

to end one’s life. Consequently, last words as part of the execution

process, visible as early as 1388 in England (Howell, 1809),

provide a unique opportunity for exploring the predictions of

TMT.

An additional theoretical perspective that can help shed

light on emotional regulation as reﬂected in ﬁnal statements

before execution is provided by socioemotional selectivity

theory (SST; Carstensen et al., 1999). According to SST, the

perception that one has limited future time (e.g., caused by a

temporal proximity to the end of one’s life) is postulated to

increase individuals’ motivation to derive emotional meaning

by prioritizing close social relationships over instrumental or

knowledge-related goals (e.g., Carstensen et al., 1999;

Carstensen,

2006). Research has provided evidence that individuals who

perceive their future time as limited or who have limited actual

life expectancies strongly value emotionally close social partners

(e.g., Carstensen and Fredrickson, 1998; Fung et al., 1999, 2001;

Fung and Carstensen, 2006). Moreover, as individuals recognize

the inevitable constraints on time that are imposed by one’s

mortality, which is not necessarily associated with chronological

age for death row inmates, the focus on the present moment is

likely to increase (Carstensen et al., 1999).

In the present research, we analyzed the actual ﬁnal statements

made by executed death row inmates in the state of Texas. This

unique data set provided the opportunity to analyze how people

cope with immediate death in a standardized, uncontrollable

situation in a large sample. Prior research found some indications

of positivity by using qualitative content coding, implemented

by humans, of the prevalent thematic categories found in Texas

death row inmates’ last statements, the most prominent themes

being the expression of love or appreciation (Heﬂick, 2005;

Schuck and Ward, 2008). Further themes that were identiﬁed

included addressing others; seeking forgiveness; expressing self-

comfort, wishes, or hopes; and religious references (Schuck and

Ward, 2008). In contrast to these previous studies, we used

computerized quantitative text analysis (Mehl, 2006) as a more

objective measure of emotional language use. In the following, we

outline the important advantages of the methodology we applied

and the relevant research questions that we were thus able to

address.

Quantitative text analysis can be diﬀerentiated with regard to

“what” (i.e., content) a person is saying and “how” (i.e., style) the

person is saying it, whereby “how” the person says something can

reveal more subtle aspects of communication (Mehl, 2006). Issues

that occur with human coders consist of a hastiness to ascribe

meaning and a general inability to monitor word choice (e.g.,

Hart, 2001). Thus, given these issues and the fact that diﬀerent

content themes (e.g., appreciation/love; expressing self-comfort

or wishes) may be expressed through the same linguistic style

(e.g., emotion-related words), a computerized word-count-based

text analysis allows researchers to objectively and reliably assess

(i.e., count) the linguistic features of individuals’ statements

and detect subtle linguistic styles (Pennebaker and King, 1999;

Pennebaker et al., 2003; Mehl, 2006; Tausczik and Pennebaker,

2010). Subsequently, the linguistic features that are assessed

(e.g., percentage of positive emotion words in death row

inmates’ ﬁnal statements) can be (a) compared with word

usage rates in samples contemplating death or experiencing

a limited time horizon due to a decision to commit suicide,

(b) related to the demographic characteristics of the sample of

death row inmates (e.g., age at execution, years on death row,

or educational level), and (c) associated with other linguistic

markers (e.g., pronoun use, verb tense, word use indicative of

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Hirschmüller and Egloff Positive Emotional Language Use in Final Words

psychological processes such as social orientation or cognitive

processing).

We hypothesized that if tuning in to emotional positivity

acts as a psychological mechanism aimed at coping with the

threat of mortality (DeWall and Baumeister, 2007; Kashdan

et al., 2014), it would be reﬂected in the emotional word use in

death row inmates’ ﬁnal statements such that death row inmates

would use a higher proportion of positive than negative emotion

words. We further hypothesized that the immense existential

threat that real-life executions evoke would lead to a higher

proportion of positive emotion words compared with word

usage base rates (Pennebaker et al., 2007b)aswellascompared

with the words of individuals contemplating death (Kashdan

et al., 2014) or individuals attempting or committing suicide

(Handelman and Lester, 2007). Drawing on postulations by SST

(Carstensen et al., 1999), we further aimed to explore the relations

between positive emotional word use and language indicative

of self-references, social orientation, cognitive processing, time

orientation, and personal concerns with religion and death. We

expected that emotional positivity in executed death row inmates’

ﬁnal statements would be associated with a greater use of social-

orientation words and present-tense verbs. Furthermore, we

conducted an exploratory investigation of associations between

positive emotional language use and self-references, cognitive-

processing word use, past-tense and future-tense verb use, as well

as religion and death-related word use.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Sample

To test our hypotheses, we analyzed death row inmates’ ﬁnal

statements, spoken minutes before their executions in the

US state of Texas. The ﬁnal statement transcripts as well as

death row inmates’ demographic information were provided

publicly available on the Texas Department of Criminal Justice

(2015) website. Information about whether death row inmates

abandoned their appeals and volunteered for execution was

provided publicly available on the Death Penalty Information

Center (2015b) website. As we only reanalyzed these publicly

available data on a de-identiﬁed and anonymized aggregate level,

a particular ethical approval for our study was not required. Of

the 527 death row inmates executed between December 1982

and June 2015, transcriptions of spoken last statements were

not available for 119 death row inmates. Of these 119 death

row inmates, 108 were listed as having declined a last statement,

eight had no statements provided, and three had only written

statements provided. Ta b le 1 presents demographic information

consisting of age at time of execution, age at incarceration, years

spent on death row, and educational level (i.e., highest grade

completed) for death row inmates with and without transcribed

spoken ﬁnal statements. Of the 408 death row inmates with

transcribed spoken statements, one was excluded from analyses

due to a reported higher age at incarceration compared to

age at execution on the Texas Department of Criminal Justice

(2015) website. The analyzed sample of death row inmates for

whom spoken last statements were provided who were executed

between 1982 and 2015 consisted of N = 407 (404 male,

three female) individuals; 178 (43.7%) death row inmates were

reported as White, 150 (36.9%) as Black, 77 (18.9%) as Hispanic,

and two (0.5%) as another ethnicity. Death row inmates with

no transcribed spoken last statement on record did not diﬀer

from the analyzed sample of 407 death row inmates in ethnic

background, χ

(3) = 1.25, p = 0.740, Cramer’s V = 0.05, or on

the other demographic variables, all ps > 0.09 (see Ta ble 1 ).

Data Preparation

Prior to the analyses, the transcript of the spoken ﬁnal statement

of each individual death row inmate was checked for additional

remarks describing the inmate’s behavior and use of foreign

language (e.g., “crying,” “portion of statement omitted due

to profanity,” “speaking in French”). A cleaned text ﬁle was

created by excluding additional remarks from the transcript and

replacing foreign word use with English translations provided

on the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (2015) website.

Verbatim examples of Texas death row inmates’ last statements

from the website are:

“I love my family. You all stay strong. Watch over each other. Stay

strong. I love you. I love you. It’s my hour. It’s my hour. I love you.

Stay strong.” (Executed death row inmate 360)

“EventhoughIlayonthisgurney,secondsawayfrommydeath,

I am at total peace. May the Lord Jesus Christ be with me. I am

at peace. Hate is going on in this world and it has to stop. Hate

causes a lifetime of pain. Even though I lay here I am still at peace.

I am still a proud American, Texas loud, Texas proud. God bless

America, God bless everyone. Let’s do this damn thing. Director

Hazelwood, thank you very much. Thank you everyone. Spark, I

love you, all of you. I love you Conna. It’s all good, it’s been a great

honor. I feel it; I am going to sleep now. Goodnight, 1, 2 there it

goes.” (Executed death row inmate 472)

“Yes, I do, uh at this time I would like to thank my parents who

have been my pillar of strength throughout this. To my brothers

and sisters and all my family members who have supported me

and who have loved me despite my faults and imperfections.

I would like to thank Pastor Williams for counseling me and

guiding me. As I look to my right and I see the family of [...].

I hope this brings you closure or some type of peace. I hope it

helps his family, son and loved ones. This has been a long journey,

one of enlightenment. It’s not the end, it’s only the beginning.”

(Executed death row inmate 459)

Data Analyses

The content of each transcribed last statement for each executed

death row inmate was analyzed separately using a recent text

analysis program, Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC;

Pennebaker et al., 2007a). LIWC uses an internal default

dictionary and determines the percentage of words in a text or

speech that correspond to various linguistic categories that have

adequate psychometric properties (Pennebaker et al., 2007b).

LIWC has been well-validated and has provided evidence for the

psychological and social implications of word use (Pennebaker

et al., 2003).

Only the output variables relevant to our hypotheses were

examined in the current study. Speciﬁcally, we analyzed the

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Hirschmüller and Egloff Positive Emotional Language Use in Final Words

TABLE 1 | Demographic information on death row inmates executed between 1982 and 2015 (June 30) in Texas.

Demographic

variables

Death row inmates with spoken statements Death row inmates without spoken statements Independent t-test

nMSDMin Max nMSDMin Max df t p Cohen’s d

Age at execution 407 39.01 8.18 24.0 67.0 119 40.02 9.17 24.0 62.0 524 1.15 0.250 0.12

Age at incarceration 391 28.15 7.78 18.0 57.0 104 29.60 8.24 17.0 53.0 493 1.67 0.096 0.18

Years on death row 391 10.96 4.37 0 31.0 104 11.41 5.35 1.0 32.0 493 0.89 0.375 0.09

Education (highest

grade completed)

381 10.11 2.11 0 16.0 100 10.39 2.04 5.0 16.0 479 1.20 0.231 0.14

Demographic information of Texas death row inmates was obtained from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (2015) website.

following LIWC variables: total number of words, percentage

of categorized dictionary words, percentage of positive emotion

words, and percentage of negative emotion words. Examples of

positive emotion words are happy and love;examplesofnegative

emotion words are sad and hate. To explore associations between

positive emotion word use and linguistic variables indicative of

self-references and social orientation, we further analyzed the

LIWC variable of the ﬁrst-person singular pronoun as well as

social-orientation words (i.e., words denoting social processes

including all personal pronouns except for ﬁrst-person singular

pronouns and verbs referring to human interaction, e.g., friends,

talk,orshare), reﬂecting how often death row inmates referred

to other people in their statements. Also, we determined LIWC

results for cognitive-processing words (e.g., think, know,or

because), indicating the extent to which death row inmates

were concerned about intellectually understanding the topics

addressed in their ﬁnal statements, as well as past-tense, present-

tense, and future-tense verbs as indicators of time orientation and

words representing the linguistic categories of religion and death

(cf. Pennebaker et al., 2007b;seealsoCohn et al., 2004).

RESULTS

Descriptive Results of Emotional

Language Use in Executed Death Row

Inmates’ Statements

Tab l e 2 presents the means and standard deviations of the LIWC

output variables total number of words, and the percentages

of categorized dictionary words, positive emotion words, and

negative emotion words for spoken statements made by 407

executed death row inmates. The death row inmates’ statements

contained a total of 42,328 words and on average 104 words

per person. Of all words, an average of 92% of the words

were categorized by the internal LIWC dictionary (see Ta ble 2 ).

Apairedt-test indicated that, as predicted, executed death row

inmates used on average a signiﬁcantly higher proportion of

positive emotion words (M = 9.64) than negative emotion words

(M = 2.65), t(406) = 15.95, p < 0.001, d = 0.79.

On the sample level, to account for the diﬀerent number

of total words spoken by death row inmates, we computed

the absolute numbers of positive emotion words and negative

emotion words. Death row inmates’ use of total positive emotion

words ranged from 0 to 50 (M = 7.94, SD = 6.88) words,

and word use for negative emotion words ranged from 0 to

27 (M = 2.88, SD = 3.54) words. In order to analyze whether

facing one’s own imminent death inﬂuenced positive emotional

language use above and beyondtheuseofnegativeemotion

words on an individual level, we calculated a positivity score

for each death row inmate by subtracting the total number

of negative emotion words from the total number of positive

emotion words. This positivity index, ranging from −15 to 31,

was greater than zero for 335 death row inmates (82.3%). The

averaged positivity score was M = 5.07 (SD = 5.91) and diﬀered

signiﬁcantly from zero, t(406) = 17.30, p < 0.001, d = 0.86.

Moreover, to demonstrate the robustness of the LIWC results

for emotional language use in thisuniquesampleofexecuted

death row inmates, Tab le 2 also provides the means and standard

deviations of the LIWC output variables only for statements

containing a minimum of three words that were categorized by

LIWC’s internal dictionary and a minimum of 10 categorized

words, respectively. Further, to control for eﬀects of outliers, we

analyzed the relevant LIWC output variables excluding the death

row inmates’ statements that diﬀered more than 3 SD from the

means reported for the LIWC variables word count, dictionary

words, positive emotion words, and negative emotion words (see

Tab l e 2). In all analyses, the LIWC results for positive emotional

language hardly diﬀeredatallandaccountedonaverageforat

least 9% of the spoken words. Because the LIWC results proved to

be very robust, the following comparisons with word usage base

rates as well as word use preceding contemplated, attempted, and

actual death were computed for the total sample of N = 407 death

row inmates for whom transcribed spoken last statements were

available.

Comparison of Positive Emotional

Language Use in Executed Death Row

Inmates’ Statements with Word Usage

Base Rates

Tab l e 3 lists descriptive results for the LIWC variable positive

emotion words reported by Pennebaker et al. (2007b) from

analyses of the written texts or speeches of N = 23,173

individuals—across a wide range of ages and social classes and

including elementary-aged individuals, college students, elderly

participants, and also prisoners—totaling over 168 million words.

These results—spanning various contexts including science

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Hirschmüller and Egloff Positive Emotional Language Use in Final Words

TABLE 2 | Descriptive results of LIWC analyses for spoken statements by death row inmates executed between 1982 and 2015 (June 30) in Texas.

All spoken statements Spoken statements with ≥3 words

categorized by LIWC’s internal dictionary

Spoken statements with ≥10 words

categorized by LIWC’ s internal dictionary

Spoken statements controlled for

outliers (M ± 3 SD)

Total authors 407 403 381 385

Total words 42,328 42,320 42,154 38,162

LIWC variables MSDMin M ax MSDMin Max MSDMin Max MSDMin Max

Word count 104.00 109.60 1.0 1268.0 105.01 109.67 3.0 1268.0 110.64 110.19 11.0 1268.0 99.12 80.38 3.0 405.0

Dictionary words

(%)

92.43 8.91 0 100.0 92.93 5.97 59.4 100.0 93.26 5.25 59.4 100.0 93.05 5.55 66.7 100.0

Positive emotion

words (%)

9.64 7.66 0 100.0 9.40 6.08 0 50.0 9.01 5.08 0 33.3 9.14 5.21 0 31.8

Negative emotion

words (%)

2.65 3.08 0 33.3 2.67 3.08 0 33.3 2.74 2.68 0 20.8 2 .52 2.40 0 10.8

articles, novels, blogs, emotional writing (writing about deeply

emotional topics), control writing (writing about trivial topics,

such as plans for the day), and talking—provide an estimate of

word usage base rates and reﬂect the degree to which diﬀerent

linguistic categories are found in various contexts. Across this

large array of analyzed texts and speeches, positive emotional

language use averaged to a grand mean of 2.74 (grand SD = 1.27)

across all contexts, ranging from M = 1.33 for science articles to

M = 3.72 for blogs and including M = 3.28 for emotional writing

and M = 3.42 for talking (cf. Pennebaker et al., 2007b, p. 11).

We computed independent t-tests to compare positive emotion

word use in statements of executed death row inmates with the

word usage base rates for positive emotions across all contexts as

well as speciﬁcally for emotional writing and talking, respectively.

As predicted, the results indicated that last statements spoken

by executed death row inmates contained a signiﬁcantly higher

proportion of positive emotion words compared with base rates

of positive emotional word usage analyzed by Pennebaker et al.

(2007b),allps < 0.001, ds > 1.1 (see Tabl e 3 ). In addition, we

used independent t-tests to analyze whether the percentage of

negative emotion words spoken by N = 407 death row inmates

in the ﬁnal moments prior to their execution diﬀered from word

usage base rates. Death row inmates’ negative emotion word use

(M = 2.65, SD = 3.08; see Ta bl e 2) was signiﬁcantly higher than

the word usage base rates across all contexts (grand M = 1.63,

grand SD = 0.91), t(23,578) = 20.64, p < 0.001, d = 0.45, as well

as talking (M = 1.49, SD ≈ 0.91), t(1,255) = 10.10, p < 0.001,

= 0.51, but did not diﬀer signiﬁcantly compared with the word

usage base rates from emotional writing (M = 2.67; SD ≈ 0.91),

t(1,419) =−0.19, p = 0.851, d =−0.01 (cf. Pennebaker et al.,

2007b, p. 11).

Comparison of Positive Emotional

Language Use in Executed Death Row

Inmates’ Statements with Word Usage

Preceding Contemplated, Attempted,

and Actual Death

Tab l e 3 also presents results for the LIWC variable positive

emotion words from recent research by Kashdan et al. (2014)

examining eﬀects of contemplated death on positive emotional

language use in written narratives. We calculated independent

t-tests to compare results for the mortality salience conditions

in Kashdan et al.’s (2014) Experiments 1A,B with the statements

of the executed death row inmates. The age and gender of

participants in Kashdan et al.’s (2014) Experiment 1A were

not recorded, but the undergraduate sample was taken from

introductory psychology classes that were 70% female and

consisted of students who were approximately 19 years old.

In Experiment 1B, participants’ average age was 18.73 years,

and 53.5% were female (cf. Kashdan et al., 2014, p. 172). We

divided the overall sample size by number of conditions and

used the approximated sample sizes of n = 136 (Experiment

1A) and n = 43 (Experiment 1B), respectively (as the precise

sample sizes per condition were not available in the paper

by Kashdan et al., 2014). As predicted, the results indicated

that executed death row inmates used a signiﬁcantly higher

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Hirschmüller and Egloff Positive Emotional Language Use in Final Words

TABLE 3 | Comparison of positive emotional language use in executed death row inmates’ statements (N = 407, M = 9.64, SD = 7.66) with word usage

base rates (Pennebaker et al., 2007b) and language use preceding contemplated death (Kashdan et al., 2014) and attempted or actual death by suicide

(Handelman and Lester, 2007).

Total authors Total word count Positive emotion words (%) Independent t-test

MSD t df pCohen’s d

Pennebaker et al., 2007b

Across all contexts 23,173 168,345,504 2.74 1.27 85.66 23,578 <0.001 1.26

Emotional writing

1,014 1,299,400 3.28 n/a (≈1.27) 25.59 1,419 <0.001 1.16

Talking

850 1,202,015 3.42 n/a (≈1.27) 23.03 1,255 <0.001 1.13

Kashdan et al., 2014

Experiment 1A: MS condition

n/a (≈136) n/a 3.67 3.78 8.74 541 <0.001 0.99

Experiment 1B: MS condition

n/a (≈43) n/a 3.84 2.97 4.92 448 <0.001 1.00

Handelman and Lester, 2007

Suicide notes: attempters

20 n/a 3.55 n/a (≈7.66) 3.47 425 <0.001 0.80

Suicide notes: completers

20 n/a 5.32 n/a (≈7.66) 2.46 425 0.014 0.56

n/a, Information not available in the original study; MS, m ortality salience. All p-values are two-tailed.

As speciﬁc standard deviations for emotional writing and talking were not available, independent t-tests were computed with the grand SD = 1.27.

As exact sample

sizes for the MS conditions were not available, independent t-tests were computed with approximated sample sizes calculated by dividing the overall sample size of

Experiments 1A,B by the number of conditions, respectively.

Means for Handelman and Lester (2007) are weighted means calculated across sexes within groups of

suicide attempters and suicide completers, respectively. As standard deviations for positive emotion word use were not available, independent t-tests were computed

using SD = 7.66 of executed death row inmates as a conservative approximation.

percentage of positive emotion words in the statements they

made minutes before their own deaths compared with individuals

contemplating their own deaths, all ps < 0.001, ds > 0.9 (see

Tab l e 3 ).

Next, we compared the proportion of positive emotional

content in suicide notes preceding attempted or actual death

reported by Handelman and Lester (2007) with positive word

use by executed death row inmates using independent t-tests.

Suicide notes composed before attempted suicides were written

by individuals (seven males, 13 females) with an age range of 13–

70 (Mdn = 32) years. Suicide notes composed before completed

suicides were written by individuals (12 males, eight females)

with an age range of 19–67 (Mdn = 35) years (cf. Handelman

and Lester, 2007, p. 103). Means of positive emotion word use

for the study by Handelman and Lester (2007) presented in

Tab l e 3 are weighted means calculated across sexes within groups

of attempted and completed suicides, respectively. We used

the standard deviation of the LIWC variable positive emotion

of Texas death row inmates (cf. Tab le 2 , SD = 7.66) as a

conservative approximated measure for the samples of attempted

and completed suicides by Handelman and Lester (2007) as this

information was not provided in the article. The results indicated

that death row inmates used a signiﬁcantly higher proportion of

positive emotion words prior to their execution compared with

individuals’ language use preceding attempted and actual death

by suicide, all ps < 0.02, ds > 0.5.

With regard to psychological diﬀerences and similarities

between suicide and execution, the last words spoken by a

subgroup of death row inmates (i.e., so-called “volunteers”) who

sought their own execution by abandoning their appeals could

be considered (Blume, 2005; Vandiver et al., 2008). However,

it remains unclear whether these consensual executions are

attributable to the acceptance of responsibility and justness of

the punishment or reﬂect the person’s seeking the aid of the

state to commit suicide (cf. Vandiver et al., 2008, p. 940). In

the analyzed sample of 407 death row inmates, the proportion

of positive emotion words in the ﬁnal statements of the 16

death row inmates who are listed as having volunteered for

execution on the Death Penalty Information Center (2015b)

website (M = 8.55, SD = 3.48) did not diﬀer from the other 391

executions (M = 9.68, SD = 7.78), t(405) =−

0.58, p = 0.561,

d = 0.19.

Additional Analyses

Further, we analyzed whether the use of positive emotional

language in executed death row inmates’ ﬁnal statements would

be associated with language use indicative of self-references,

social orientation, cognitive processing, time orientation, and

personal concerns with religion and death. We computed

correlations between the proportion of positive emotion words

that were used and the respective LIWC variables, omitting

two individuals with 0% categorized dictionary words from

the correlation analyses. The descriptive and correlation results

are presented in Ta bl e 4 . As hypothesized, death row inmates’

positive emotional language use was associated with a greater use

of social-orientation words, including words that refer to friends

and present-tense verbs, all ps < 0.001. The ﬁndings also showed

that emotional positivity in ﬁnal statements was related to a more

frequent use of ﬁrst-person singular self-references as well as

to less use of cognitive-processing words, past-tense verbs, and

death-related words, all ps < 0.010.

Supplementary Analyses

In addition, supplementary analyses (see Supplementary Figure

S1 and Supplementary Tables S1 and S2, available online)

showed that the ﬁndings of strong emotional positivity in death

Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 6 January 2016 | Volume 6 | Article 1985

Hirschmüller and Egloff Positive Emotional Language Use in Final Words

TABLE 4 | Descriptive statistics for language use indicative of

self-references, social orientation, cognitive processing, time orientation,

and personal concerns with religion and death and associations with

positive emotional language use in executed death row inmates’

statements.

Descriptive statistics Positive emotion words (%)

LIWC variables (in %) MSD r p

First-person singular

pronouns

13.34 5.51 0.14 0.006

Social processes 17.67 8.57 0.30 <0.001

Family 1.99 2.41 0.02 0.683

Friends 0.33 1.10 0.22 <0.001

Humans 1.08 1.59 −0.02 0.706

Cognitive processes 15.42 6.32 −0.28 <0.001

Past tense 2.42 2.49 −0.31 <0.001

Present tense 15.68 7.33 0.19 <0.001

Future tense 1.66 2.48 −0.07 0.169

Religion 2.89 4.54 0.07 0.146

Death 0.70 1.48 −0.17 <0.001

N = 405. Signiﬁcant correlations are printed in bold.

row inmates’ ﬁnal statements were very robust with regard to

demographic variables. We computed correlations between death

row inmates’ positive word usage and the demographic variables

age at execution, age at incarceration, years on death row,

and educational level (i.e., highest grade completed), omitting

two individuals with 0% categorized dictionary words from

the correlation analyses. The proportion of positive emotional

language use in the sample of 405 death row inmates was not

signiﬁcantly correlated with age at execution, r(403) =−0.04,

p = 0.469, age at incarceration, r(387) =−0.03, p = 0.586,

years spent on death row, r(387) =−0.04, p = 0.469, or

educational level, r(377) =−0.05, p = 0.307. Moreover,

neither the percentage of negative emotion words used nor the

calculated positivity index was signiﬁcantly correlated with the

four demographic variables that we considered, all rs < | 0.08|,

all ps > 0.150. Comparing the proportion of death row inmates’

positive emotional language use across ethnic backgrounds

revealed signiﬁcant diﬀerences, F(3, 403) = 5.20, p = 0.002 (see

Supplementary Table S1 available online). Post hoc tests (Tukey’s

HSD) showed that White death row inmates used signiﬁcantly

fewer positive emotion words compared with Black death row

inmates (p = 0.001), but despite these ethnic diﬀerences, the

percentage of positive emotion words used by White death row

inmates (M = 7.99) was still signiﬁcantly higher than found in

the suicide notes of completed suicides (Handelman and Lester,

2007), t(196) = 2.09, p = 0.038, d = 0.41. Additional analyses

showed no signiﬁcant diﬀerences in ethnic background for the

percentage of negative emotion words used, F(3, 403) = 0.15,

p = 0.931, and the calculated positivity index, F(3, 403) = 1.48,

= 0.220. Further, with regard to situational characteristics,

the percentage of positive emotion words used did not change

signiﬁcantly from before to after the Texas Board of Criminal

Justice allowed victim witnesses to attend executions in January

1996 (Texas Department of Criminal Justice, 2014), p = 0.222,

d = 0.22 (see Supplementary Table S2 available online). The

percentage of negative emotion words used was slightly higher

after victims’ families and individuals close to victims were

permitted to attend executions, p = 0.040, d =−0.30, but as

the average absolute number of words spoken by death row

inmates was higher after this change, p < 0.001, d =−0.79, the

positivity index was signiﬁcantly higher after victim witnesses

were allowed to attend executions (M = 5.50, SD = 6.15) than

before (M = 2.20, SD = 2.62), t(405) =−3.89, p < 0.001,

d =−0.70 (see Supplementary Table S2 available online).

DISCUSSION

In the current study, using a computerized quantitative text

analysis approach in a unique sample of Texas death row inmates

executed between 1982 and 2015, we were able to show that the

salience of one’s own imminent mortality was reﬂected in the

emotional positivity of spoken ﬁnal statements. That is, on the

sample level, we were able to demonstrate that death row inmates

used a signiﬁcantly higher percentage of positive emotion words

than negative emotion words in their ﬁnal statements. Moreover,

on the individual level, a positivity index, which was statistically

diﬀerent from zero on average, showed that statements by over

80% of executed death row inmates contained more positive than

negative emotion words.

More importantly, our ﬁndings are the ﬁrst to demonstrate

that executed death row inmates use a signiﬁcantly higher

percentage of positive emotion words compared with base rates of

word usage from heterogeneous samples and various contexts (cf.

Pennebaker et al., 2007b).Inaddition,wewereabletoshowthat

executed death row inmates’ statements contained a signiﬁcantly

higher proportion of positive emotion words than the writings

of individuals contemplating death (cf. Kashdan et al., 2014)as

well as compared with writings preceding attempted or actual

suicide (cf. Handelman and Lester, 2007). Due to the large

sample size and the various control analyses, our results on

emotional positivity can be viewed as robust. In sum, the ﬁnal

statements of Texas death row inmates conveyed extremely

positive expressions that reﬂected the emotional processes of

coping with mortality. In addition, emotional positivity in spoken

ﬁnal statements was shown to be associated with a greater

frequency of language use indicative of self-references, social

orientation, and present-oriented time focus as well as with

fewer instances of cognitive-processing, past-oriented, and death-

related word use.

In line with TMT’s proposed psychological defenses that are

aimed at avoiding or ignoring the anxiety that mortality salience

evokes (Pyszczynski et al., 1999), our ﬁndings contribute to

the burgeoning literature that suggests elevations in positive

emotional language use as an immediate way of coping with

the immense threat of one’s imminent death (see DeWall

and Baumeister, 2007; Kashdan et al., 2014). The presence

of such a large amount of emotional positivity despite facing

one’s actual death raises interesting psychological issues

and seems clearly counterintuitive. In the fully constrained

moments before execution while undergoing standardized

execution procedures and being strapped to a gurney

Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 7 January 2016 | Volume 6 | Article 1985

Hirschmüller and Egloff Positive Emotional Language Use in Final Words

(Texas Department of Criminal Justice, 2012), death row inmates

have little control over their situation with the exception of

the opportunity to make a ﬁnal statement. To defend against

death anxiety, death row inmates seem to show an intense

impulse to embrace emotional positivity. This might reﬂect

underlying motivational mechanisms by which people value

meaningful close others and focus on the moment rather than

on the past or distant future, and it might originate from

the perception of time limitations on life itself as postulated

by SST (Carstensen et al., 1999). Thus, the public policy of

allowing the death row inmate a ﬁnal opportunity to speak

to family and friends, those close to the victim(s), prison

oﬃcials, as well as the general public may be viewed as

one act through which death row inmates may linguistically

regulate their intense emotions and experience some form of

perceived control in the ﬁnal moments of life (see also Vollum

and Longmire, 2009; Ward, 2010). However, larger ethical,

moral, and legal issues of capital punishment still remain (e.g.,

Bohm, 2008; for a database of exonerated, innocent death

row inmates, see the Death Penalty Information Center, 2015a

website).

Despite the robust ﬁndings of a tuning in to emotional

positivity in death row inmates’ last statements reﬂected by

a quantitative text analysis, several limitations need to be

considered. First, we were not able to examine the defensive

psychological mechanisms of death salience for nearly 23%

of the death row inmates—those who chose to remain silent.

Nevertheless, demographic comparisons provided evidence that

these individuals did not diﬀer signiﬁcantly from the death row

inmates who made ﬁnal statements. Second, due to a lack of

more detailed information on each individual death row inmate,

contextual factors caused by death row conﬁnement, behaviors

prior to execution, and situational factors in the death chamber

were not comprehensively taken into account. We could not

rule out the possibility that the conditions of life on death

row (i.e., solitary conﬁnement while awaiting death usually for

years) and its psychological consequences (see e.g., Johnson,

1979; Cunningham and Vigen, 2002) may have inﬂuenced the

delivery of last words. Also, behaviors prior to execution (e.g.,

an apologetic confession to the oﬀense) were not considered

in the analyses of ﬁnal words. According to prior research on

the positive consequences of emotional disclosure (Pennebaker,

2003), it is possible that a positive psychological impact could

have occurred for death row inmates who had confessed at some

time prior to execution (Umbreit and Vos, 2000). Further, despite

the extremely standardized execution protocol, the possible

inﬂuence of situational characteristics (e.g., the actual presence

or absence of one’s own loved ones and victim witnesses) during

the execution could not be examined.

Future research may investigate other forms of

communication by death row inmates (e.g., diaries or letters

written before death) to provide further empirical support for

the emotional tuning in to positivity as a coping mechanism

for regulating anxiety about one’s mortality. Also, future

research could analyze language use in other samples facing

death, such as terminally ill individuals (e.g., hospice patients).

Moreover, people’s last words before death published on

online social network sites such as Facebook or Twitter

(e.g., Gunn and Lester, 2012) can provide researchers with

further valuable insights into how people cope with death

anxiety linguistically. More broadly, researchers, taking an

appreciative approach to death (cf. Frias et al., 2011; Vail et al.,

2012), should continue to examine the positive feelings and

positive experiences that a person’s own imminent death can

promote.

Taken together, in line with TMT’s postulation of

psychological defenses against death anxiety (Pyszczynski et al.,

1999), the present work demonstrates that a pronounced

tuning in to emotional positivity manifests in ﬁnal language

use immediately before execution. Thus, our ﬁndings also

support the notion that there is more psychological terror

associated with being executed compared with (completed

and attempted) suicide and contemplated death given that the

tuning in to emotional positivity acts as a terror management

mechanism. Considering real deaths by both execution and

suicide, it remains an important task to further investigate why

individuals facing execution use an even greater number of

positive emotion words. Psychologists, taking account of the

perspectives of death row inmates, victims, and society as a

whole, should continue to shed light on individuals’ immediate

coping with human mortality reﬂected in their words before

death.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The data used in this publication were made publicly available by

the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ; Data for years

1982–2015) and the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC;

data for years 1982–2015). We thank Mariele Drobnitzky and

Michaela Fakiner for their help with data preparation.

SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found

online at: http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.

2015.01985

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Conﬂict of Interest Statement: The authors declare that the research was

conducted in the absence of any commercial or ﬁnancial relationships that could

be construed as a potential conﬂict of interest.

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