Memories of Angering Events: Word Count Analysis of Linguistic Content of Autobiographical Recall of Angering Events

The current research explored the language individuals use to describe their memories of times they experienced intense anger. Word count analysis of these memories was conducted using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count program (LIWC; Pennebaker et al., 2022). Angry memories were compared with neutral memories (Study 1) and fearful, sad, anxious, and disgust memories (Studies 2 and 3). These latter comparison conditions were useful as they compared discrete emotions that were similar to anger in negativity and arousal. Some of the most consistent and striking differences were that angry memories, as compared to other memories, included: more social words (personal pronouns, social processes, affiliation, males, females); more words relating to agency/coping potential (clout, drive, power); more words related to justification (moralization, politeness); and more words related to conflict (conflict, communication). These results suggest that angry memories exhibit unique linguistic characteristics.