Study: People Facing Death Are Surprisingly More Positive Than Imagined
- 7 years ago
Death is often something that’s feared, and, as such, fills people with a considerable amount of dread. However, according to recent research, the outlooks of those facing their own imminent mortality are surprisingly positive.
Death is often something that’s feared, and, as such, fills people with a considerable amount of dread.
However, according to recent research, the outlooks of those facing their own imminent mortality are surprisingly positive.
According to a release about the study, a team of researchers hailing from a number of U.S. universities came to that conclusion after it, “examined the writings of terminally ill patients and inmates on death row.”
Sources used for the study included, “blog posts from terminally ill patients who were dying of either cancer or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis,” and, “last words of death-row inmates in Texas."
The team also set up a comparison group comprised of people who were asked to, “imagine that they had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and to write a blog post, keeping in mind that they had only a few months to live.”
They then used an algorithm to, “[analyze] the actual and imagined blog posts for words that described negative and positive emotions…"
The release notes, “The results revealed that blog posts from individuals who were terminally ill included considerably more positive emotion words and fewer negative emotion words than did those written by participants who simply imagined they were dying.”
Kurt Gray, one of the researchers, commented on the findings.
He said, “In our imagination, dying is lonely and meaningless, but the final blog posts of terminally ill patients and the last words of death row inmates are filled with love, social connection, and meaning."
Death is often something that’s feared, and, as such, fills people with a considerable amount of dread.
However, according to recent research, the outlooks of those facing their own imminent mortality are surprisingly positive.
According to a release about the study, a team of researchers hailing from a number of U.S. universities came to that conclusion after it, “examined the writings of terminally ill patients and inmates on death row.”
Sources used for the study included, “blog posts from terminally ill patients who were dying of either cancer or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis,” and, “last words of death-row inmates in Texas."
The team also set up a comparison group comprised of people who were asked to, “imagine that they had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and to write a blog post, keeping in mind that they had only a few months to live.”
They then used an algorithm to, “[analyze] the actual and imagined blog posts for words that described negative and positive emotions…"
The release notes, “The results revealed that blog posts from individuals who were terminally ill included considerably more positive emotion words and fewer negative emotion words than did those written by participants who simply imagined they were dying.”
Kurt Gray, one of the researchers, commented on the findings.
He said, “In our imagination, dying is lonely and meaningless, but the final blog posts of terminally ill patients and the last words of death row inmates are filled with love, social connection, and meaning."