Table_4_RETRACTED: When Words Hurt: Affective Word Use in Daily News Coverage Impacts Mental Health.DOCX

Media exposure influences mental health symptomology in response to salient aversive events, like terrorist attacks, but little has been done to explore the impact of news coverage that varies more subtly in affective content. Here, we utilized an existing data set in which participants self-reported physical symptoms, depressive symptoms, and anxiety symptoms, and completed a potentiated startle task assessing their physiological reactivity to aversive stimuli at three time points (waves) over a 9-month period. Using a computational linguistics approach, we then calculated an average ratio of words with positive vs. negative affective connotations for only articles from news sources to which each participant self-reported being exposed over the prior 2 weeks at each wave of data collection. As hypothesized, individuals exposed to news coverage with more negative affective tone over the prior 2 weeks reported significantly greater physical and depressive symptoms, and had significantly greater physiological reactivity to aversive stimuli.

媒体接触会影响个体面对显著厌恶性事件（如恐怖袭击）时的心理健康症状表现，但目前针对情感内容存在更细微差异的新闻报道的影响，相关研究仍较为匮乏。本研究使用了一套现有数据集，该数据集的参与者在9个月内的三个数据收集波次（waves）中，自行报告了躯体症状、抑郁症状与焦虑症状，并完成了强化惊吓范式任务（potentiated startle task），以评估其对厌恶性刺激的生理反应性。随后，本研究采用计算语言学方法，针对各数据波次收集前两周内，参与者自行报告曾接触过的新闻来源所发布的文章，计算了其中带有积极与消极情感内涵词汇的平均占比比值。正如研究假设所示，前两周接触情感基调更消极的新闻报道的个体，报告的躯体与抑郁症状显著更严重，且对厌恶性刺激的生理反应性也显著更强。