The narrative arc: Revealing core narrative structures through text analysis

Boyd, Ryan L.; Blackburn, Kate; Pennebaker, James W.

doi:10.1126/sciadv.aba2196

Cited by 95 publications

(106 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…The resulting factor, analytic thinking, was positively correlated with 4-y grade point average, College Board scores, and markers of socioeconomic status. Lower analytic scores are found in speeches and communications of leaders who write and speak more informally (22) and authors who write about more personal and emotional topics compared with more factual ones (23).…”

Section: Significancementioning

confidence: 90%

Language left behind on social media exposes the emotional and cognitive costs of a romantic breakup

Seraj

Blackburn

Pennebaker

2021

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Using archived social media data, the language signatures of people going through breakups were mapped. Text analyses were conducted on 1,027,541 posts from 6,803 Reddit users who had posted about their breakups. The posts include users’ Reddit history in the 2 y surrounding their breakups across the various domains of their life, not just posts pertaining to their relationship. Language markers of an impending breakup were evident 3 mo before the event, peaking on the week of the breakup and returning to baseline 6 mo later. Signs included an increase in I-words, we-words, and cognitive processing words (characteristic of depression, collective focus, and the meaning-making process, respectively) and drops in analytic thinking (indicating more personal and informal language). The patterns held even when people were posting to groups unrelated to breakups and other relationship topics. People who posted about their breakup for longer time periods were less well-adjusted a year after their breakup compared to short-term posters. The language patterns seen for breakups replicated for users going through divorce (n = 5,144; 1,109,867 posts) or other types of upheavals (n = 51,357; 11,081,882 posts). The cognitive underpinnings of emotional upheavals are discussed using language as a lens.

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Section: Significancementioning

confidence: 90%

Language left behind on social media exposes the emotional and cognitive costs of a romantic breakup

Seraj

Blackburn

Pennebaker

2021

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

Self Cite

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“…We focused on one possible mechanism, namely the transportation function of narratives. This unfolding of stories [e.g., the narrative arc ( 51 )] provides a context that allows individuals to identify with the main characters, become emotionally invested, simulate different mental worlds, and allow a temporal dislocation from the here and now—all of which contribute to the development of adaptive psychological and behavioral reactions when dealing with challenging real-life situations.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Storytelling increases oxytocin and positive emotions and decreases cortisol and pain in hospitalized children

Brockington

Moreira

Buso

et al. 2021

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Storytelling is a distinctive human characteristic that may have played a fundamental role in humans’ ability to bond and navigate challenging social settings throughout our evolution. However, the potential impact of storytelling on regulating physiological and psychological functions has received little attention. We investigated whether listening to narratives from a storyteller can provide beneficial effects for children admitted to intensive care units. Biomarkers (oxytocin and cortisol), pain scores, and psycholinguistic associations were collected immediately before and after storytelling and an active control intervention (solving riddles that also involved social interaction but lacked the immersive narrative aspect). Compared with the control group, children in the storytelling group showed a marked increase in oxytocin combined with a decrease in cortisol in saliva after the 30-min intervention. They also reported less pain and used more positive lexical markers when describing their time in hospital. Our findings provide a psychophysiological basis for the short-term benefits of storytelling and suggest that a simple and inexpensive intervention may help alleviate the physical and psychological pain of hospitalized children on the day of the intervention.

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“…If a researcher is interested in how a construct might change over time or throughout the course of a single text (e.g., Boyd et al, 2020), they might segment a text into various "chunks." For example, Boyd et al, 2020 evaluated the narrative structure of stories by separating novels, newspaper articles, and Supreme Court opinions into five equal-length segments, or the typical narrative structure according to prior research.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Meaning Extraction Method: An Approach to Evaluate Content Patterns From Large-Scale Language Data

Markowitz

2021

Front. Commun.

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Qualitative content analyses often rely on a top-down approach to understand themes in a collection of texts. A codebook prescribes how humans should judge if a text fits a theme based on rules and judgment criteria. Qualitative approaches are challenging because they require many resources (e.g., coders, training, rounds of coding), can be affected by researcher or coder bias, may miss meaningful patterns that deviate from the codebook, and often use a subsample of the data. A complementary, bottom-up approach—the Meaning Extraction Method—has been popular in social psychology but rarely applied to communication research. This paper outlines the value of the Meaning Extraction Method, concluding with a guide to conduct analyses of content and themes from massive and complete datasets, quantitatively. The Meaning Extraction Method is performed on a public and published archive of pet adoption profiles to demonstrate the approach. Considerations for communication research are offered.

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The narrative arc: Revealing core narrative structures through text analysis

Cited by 95 publications

References 41 publications

Language left behind on social media exposes the emotional and cognitive costs of a romantic breakup

Language left behind on social media exposes the emotional and cognitive costs of a romantic breakup

Storytelling increases oxytocin and positive emotions and decreases cortisol and pain in hospitalized children

The Meaning Extraction Method: An Approach to Evaluate Content Patterns From Large-Scale Language Data

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