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. 2018 Jul;6(4):529-542.
doi: 10.1177/2167702617747074. Epub 2018 Jan 5.

In an Absolute State: Elevated Use of Absolutist Words Is a Marker Specific to Anxiety, Depression, and Suicidal Ideation

Mohammed Al-Mosaiwi  1 , Tom Johnstone  1
Affiliations

In an Absolute State: Elevated Use of Absolutist Words Is a Marker Specific to Anxiety, Depression, and Suicidal Ideation

Mohammed Al-Mosaiwi et al. Clin Psychol Sci. 2018 Jul.

Abstract

Absolutist thinking is considered a cognitive distortion by most cognitive therapies for anxiety and depression. Yet, there is little empirical evidence of its prevalence or specificity. Across three studies, we conducted a text analysis of 63 Internet forums (over 6,400 members) using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count software to examine absolutism at the linguistic level. We predicted and found that anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation forums contained more absolutist words than control forums (ds > 3.14). Suicidal ideation forums also contained more absolutist words than anxiety and depression forums (ds > 1.71). We show that these differences are more reflective of absolutist thinking than psychological distress. It is interesting that absolutist words tracked the severity of affective disorder forums more faithfully than negative emotion words. Finally, we found elevated levels of absolutist words in depression recovery forums. This suggests that absolutist thinking may be a vulnerability factor.

Keywords: affective disorders; anxiety; cognitive style; depression; open data; open materials; text analysis.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Conflicting Interests: The author(s) declared that there were no conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship or the publication of this article.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Mean percentage of (a) absolutist words in Study 1 groups, (b) absolutist words in Study 2 groups, and (c) negative emotion words for Study 2 groups. Error bars indicate 95% bootstrapped confidence intervals. PTSD = posttraumatic stress disorder; ED = eating disorder; BPD = borderline personality disorder.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
Mean percentage of (a) absolutist words and (b) positive emotion words for the recovery group and all Study 1 groups (control, anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation). Error bars indicate 95% bootstrapped confidence intervals.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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