Women are Warmer but No Less Assertive than Men: Gender and Language on Facebook

Gender differences in tweets on postnatal depression: A corpus linguistic analysis

Gender differences have been found in the way parents communicate online, however it is unclear whether these differences apply in the context of postnatal depression (PND). This research aimed to evaluate online discourses surrounding PND and explore gender differences in communication style associated with PND. X (formerly Twitter) data (15,850 posts) was identified and collected based on a key term search (e.g. 'PND') and analysed using corpus linguistic analysis. Results showed that female X users were more likely to discuss PND using words with a negative connotation or to use self-referent items, compared to male users who discussed PND more generally. X content related to PND was mostly created by female users and generally revolved around the experiences of mothers. The limited discussion regarding paternal PND suggests a lack of acknowledgement and insufficient online resources available for fathers.

CIDER: Context-sensitive polarity measurement for short-form text

Researchers commonly perform sentiment analysis on large collections of short texts like tweets, Reddit posts or newspaper headlines that are all focused on a specific topic, theme or event. Usually, general-purpose sentiment analysis methods are used. These perform well on average but miss the variation in meaning that happens across different contexts, for example, the word "active" has a very different intention and valence in the phrase "active lifestyle" versus "active volcano". This work presents a new approach, CIDER (Context Informed Dictionary and sEmantic Reasoner), which performs context-sensitive linguistic analysis, where the valence of sentiment-laden terms is inferred from the whole corpus before being used to score the individual texts. In this paper, we detail the CIDER algorithm and demonstrate that it outperforms state-of-the-art generalist unsupervised sentiment analysis techniques on a large collection of tweets about the weather. CIDER is also applicable to alternative (non-sentiment) linguistic scales. A case study on gender in the UK is presented, with the identification of highly gendered and sentiment-laden days. We have made our implementation of CIDER available as a Python package: https://pypi.org/project/ciderpolarity/.

The queen bee phenomenon in Canadian surgical subspecialties: An evaluation of gender biases in the resident training environment

BACKGROUND

The queen bee phenomenon (QBP) describes the behavioural response that occurs when women achieve success in a male-dominated environment, and in this position of authority, treat their female subordinates more critically. It has been demonstrated in business, academia, the military, and police force. The goal of this study was to determine whether the QBP occurs in surgical specialties. We hypothesized that female surgeons, fellows, and senior surgical residents would be more critical in their assessment of junior female residents than their male counterparts.

METHODS

A scenario-based survey was distributed via email to all Canadian surgical programs between February and March 2021. Scenarios were designed to assess either female or male learners. Centers distributed surveys to attending surgeons, surgical fellows, resident physicians, and affiliate surgeons. Respondents average Likert score for female-based and male-based questions were calculated. Subgroup analyses were performed based on gender, age, seniority, and surgical specialty.

RESULTS

716 survey responses were collected, with 387 respondents identifying as male (54%) and 321 identifying as female (45%). 385 attending surgeons (54%), 66 fellows (9%), and 263 residents (37%) responded. The mean Likert scores for female respondents assessing female learners was significantly lower than male learners (p = 0·008, CI = 95%). During subgroup analysis, some specialties demonstrated significant scoring differences.

DISCUSSION

The QBP was shown to be present among surgical specialties. Female respondents assessed female learners more critically than their male counterparts.

CONCLUSION

These findings highlight the importance of tackling organizational biases to create more equitable educational and work environment in surgery.

Emotional straying: Flux and management of women's emotions in social media

In recent years, social media, which has emerged with the core focus on interaction within "acquaintance networks," has gradually been infiltrated by "strangers," leading to the disorientation of many users, especially women, amidst the diverse and intricate social platforms and emotional landscapes. Grounded in the experiential perspective of social media users, this study explores the correlations among woman emotions, satisfaction, and behavior, starting from the standpoint of the impact of social media. Through in-depth interviews with woman cohorts in China, various dimensions such as emotional fluctuations, satisfaction levels, and behaviors in social media were examined. The findings reveal that emotional expression serves as a primary motivation and purpose for users to sustain their engagement with social media. Additionally, emotional masking represents a proactive operational behavior induced by the needs for social relationship maintenance and the accumulation of social capital. Furthermore, emotional management manifests as user-initiated abandonment or shift of social media activities in response to perceived emotional stress. On this basis, a conceptual model integrating woman emotions, satisfaction, and behavior in the context of social media was constructed. The outcomes of this research hold significant theoretical and practical implications for future studies on woman emotions and behaviors, as well as for the development of social media functionalities, content management, public media usage, and psychological health interventions.

Masculine men do not like feminine wording: The effectiveness of gendered wording in health promotion leaflets in the UK

Following mixed-methods sequential design and drawing on the message-audience congruence concept and homophily theory, across three studies in the UK, we examined the effect of gendered wording and endorser’s gender on the effectiveness of leaflets promoting walking. In Study 1, a mall-intercept study achieved 247 completed questionnaires. Results demonstrated that men and women indicated the highest behavioural intentions for communal wording presented by a male endorser. However, pairwise comparisons revealed that when the wording of the advert was agentic and the endorser was male, males indicated significantly higher scores of behavioural intentions compared with females. Attitude towards the ad for women was highest for communal wording/female endorser; for men it was for agentic wording/male endorser. In Study 2, consumers’ views towards the gendered content were explored in 20 semi-structured interviews. In study 3 we examined the impact of the respondent’s gender role identity on gendered content effectiveness. Overall, when controlled for level of gender role identity, only masculine males evaluated leaflets featuring communal wording negatively which suggests that wording matters only for masculine males, but not for other men and women. Theoretically, we identified that gender-based message-respondent congruence is not a necessary aspect of communications to be effective, except for one group: masculine males. Our study identified dominant gender role identity as a factor that explained respondents’ preferences for presented stimuli. Specifically, males who display masculine gender role identity differ in evaluations of communal wording from all other groups. Social and commercial marketers who target men and women with exercise-related services should consider the use of agentic wording endorsed by a male endorser when targeting masculine men to increase the likelihood of eliciting positive attitudes towards the communication. However, such distinctions should not be associated with differences in women’s evaluations or men who do not report masculine gender role identity.

Understanding the expression of loneliness on Twitter across age groups and genders

Some individuals seek support around loneliness on social media forums. In this work, we aim to determine differences in the use of language by users-in different age groups and genders (female, male), who publish posts on Twitter expressing loneliness. We hypothesize that these differences in the use of language will reflect how these users express themselves and some of their support needs. Interventions may vary depending on the age and gender of an individual, hence, in order to identify high-risk individuals who express loneliness on Twitter and provide appropriate interventions for these users, it is important to understand the variations in language use by users who belong to different age groups and genders and post about loneliness on Twitter. We discuss the findings from this work and how they can help guide the design of online loneliness interventions.

Linguistic gender congruity differentially correlates with film and novel ratings by critics and audiences

The film and publishing industries are fraught with gender disparities, with men overpowering nearly every sector of these domains. For instance, men are not only paid more than women in the film industry, but they also outnumber women in positions such as director, screenwriter, and lead acting roles. Similarly, women often resort to assuming gender-neutral or male pseudonyms to increase their prospects in the publishing industry. This widespread gender inequality in the film and publishing industries raises the question of how writers’ gender relates to gendered language and narrative receptions. Two archival studies examined whether gender-linked language relates to film (N = 521) and novel (N = 150) ratings, and whether those associations differ as a function of writer gender or the expertise of the rater (professional critics and lay audience members). Results demonstrated that female screenwriters and novelists used a more feminine style of writing, whereas male screenwriters and novelists used a more masculine style of writing. Lay audiences gave more positive ratings to films and novels by writers who used a more gender-congruent writing style, in contrast with professional critics, who gave more positive reviews to films by writers who used a more gender-incongruent writing style. Our findings substantiate past research regarding the differing tastes of lay audiences and professional critics in addition to lending insight into subtle social dynamics that may sustain gender biases in the film and publishing industries.

Understanding Communication in an Online Cancer Forum: Content Analysis Study

Background

Cancer affects individuals, their family members, and friends, and increasingly, some of these individuals are turning to online cancer forums to express their thoughts/feelings and seek support such as asking cancer-related questions. The thoughts/feelings expressed and the support needed from these online forums may differ depending on if (1) an individual has or had cancer or (2) an individual is a family member or friend of an individual who has or had cancer; the language used in posts in these forums may reflect these differences.

Objective

Using natural language processing methods, we aim to determine the differences in the support needs and concerns expressed in posts published on an online cancer forum by (1) users who self-declare to have or had cancer compared with (2) users who self-declare to be family members or friends of individuals with or that had cancer.

Methods

Using latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA), which is a natural language processing algorithm and Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC), a psycholinguistic dictionary, we analyzed posts published on an online cancer forum with the aim to delineate the language features associated with users in these different groups.

Results

Users who self-declare to have or had cancer were more likely to post about LDA topics related to hospital visits (Cohen d=0.671) and use words associated with LIWC categories related to health (Cohen d=0.635) and anxiety (Cohen d=0.126). By contrast, users who declared to be family members or friends tend to post about LDA topics related to losing a family member (Cohen d=0.702) and LIWC categories focusing on the past (Cohen d=0.465) and death (Cohen d=0.181) were more associated with these users.

Conclusions

Using LDA and LIWC, we show that there are differences in the support needs and concerns expressed in posts published on an online cancer forum by users with cancer compared with family members or friends of those with cancer. Hence, responders to online cancer forums need to be cognizant of these differences in support needs and concerns and tailor their responses based on these findings.

Studying How Individuals Who Express the Feeling of Loneliness in an Online Loneliness Forum Communicate in a Nonloneliness Forum: Observational Study

BACKGROUND

Loneliness is a public health concern, and increasingly, individuals experiencing loneliness are seeking support on online forums, some of which focus on discussions around loneliness (loneliness forums). Some of these individuals may also seek support around loneliness on online forums not related to loneliness or well-being (nonloneliness forums). Hence, to design and implement appropriate and efficient online loneliness interventions, it is important to understand how individuals who express and seek support around loneliness on online loneliness forums communicate in nonloneliness forums; this could provide further insights into the support needs and concerns of these users.

OBJECTIVE

This study aims to explore how users who express the feeling of loneliness and seek support around loneliness on an online loneliness forum communicate in an online nonloneliness forum.

METHODS

A total of 2401 users who expressed loneliness in posts published on a loneliness forum on Reddit and had published posts in a nonloneliness forum were identified. Using latent Dirichlet allocation (a natural language processing algorithm); Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (a psycholinguistic dictionary); and the word score-based language features valence, arousal, and dominance, the language use differences in posts published in the nonloneliness forum by these users compared to a control group of users who did not belong to any loneliness forum on Reddit were determined.

RESULTS

It was found that in posts published in the nonloneliness forum, users who expressed loneliness tend to use more words associated with the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count categories on sadness (Cohen d=0.10) and seeking to socialize (Cohen d=0.114), and use words associated with valence (Cohen d=0.364) and dominance (Cohen d=0.117). In addition, they tend to publish posts related to latent Dirichlet allocation topics such as relationships (Cohen d=0.105) and family and friends and mental health (Cohen d=0.10).

CONCLUSIONS

There are clear distinctions in language use in nonloneliness forum posts by users who express loneliness compared to a control group of users. These findings can help with the design and implementation of online interventions around loneliness.

Exposure to ethnic discrimination in social media and symptoms of anxiety and depression among Hispanic emerging adults: Examining the moderating role of gender

METHOD

Two hundred Hispanic emerging adults from Arizona (n = 99) and Florida (n = 101) completed a cross-sectional survey, and data were analyzed using hierarchical multiple regression and moderation analyses.

RESULTS

Higher social media discrimination was associated with higher symptoms of depression and generalized anxiety. Moderation analyses indicated that higher social media discrimination was only associated with symptoms of depression and generalized anxiety among men, but not women.

CONCLUSION

This is likely the first study on social media discrimination and mental health among emerging adults; thus, expanding this emerging field of research to a distinct developmental period.

Stereotyping in the digital age: Male language is "ingenious", female language is "beautiful" - and popular

The huge power for social influence of digital media may come with the risk of intensifying common societal biases, such as gender and age stereotypes. Speaker's gender and age also behaviorally manifest in language use, and language may be a powerful tool to shape impact. The present study took the example of TED, a highly successful knowledge dissemination platform, to study online influence. Our goal was to investigate how gender- and age-linked language styles-beyond chronological age and identified gender-link to talk impact and whether this reflects gender and age stereotypes. In a pre-registered study, we collected transcripts of TED Talks along with their impact measures, i.e., views and ratios of positive and negative talk ratings, from the TED website. We scored TED Speakers' (N = 1,095) language with gender- and age-morphed language metrics to obtain measures of female versus male, and younger versus more senior language styles. Contrary to our expectations and to the literature on gender stereotypes, more female language was linked to higher impact in terms of quantity, i.e., more talk views, and this was particularly the case among talks with a lot of views. Regarding quality of impact, language signatures of gender and age predicted different types of positive and negative ratings above and beyond main effects of speaker's gender and age. The differences in ratings seem to reflect common stereotype contents of warmth (e.g., "beautiful" for female, "courageous" for female and senior language) versus competence (e.g., "ingenious", "informative" for male language). The results shed light on how verbal behavior may contribute to stereotypical evaluations. They also illuminate how, within new digital social contexts, female language might be uniquely rewarded and, thereby, an underappreciated but highly effective tool for social influence. WC = 286 (max. 300 words).

The social life of COVID-19: Early insights from social media monitoring data collected in Poland

Research has revealed that social media data may be promising in many health threats and help to understand how people respond to them. As the outbreak of a novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is a global pandemic, a real-time social media monitoring is needed to know the scale of this phenomenon. We have reported the frequency, reach and impact of online mentions about the COVID-19 illness taken from social media platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, blogs, forums, and news portals to highlight and better understand the scope of coronavirus discussion in Poland. We used SentiOne social listening tool to gather the data and perform the monitoring between 24 February 2020 to 25 March 2020. We found a total of 1,415,750 mentions related to COVID-19 which gives the average 47,192 mentions per day. 95.36% (1,350,059) of mentions were people's updates and expressions, 4.64% (65,691) mentions were articles from news portals and social media. Males have dominated the online conversation about COVID-19 (65.32% vs 34.68% females). At the same time, women were more likely to discuss the topic on social media platforms such as: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. We concluded with theoretical and practical implications.

Women in Environmental Sciences (WiES) and The UN SDGs: A Catalyst for Achieving a Sustainable Future for All

Women can serve as catalysts needed to achieve the United Nation’s Sustainable Development agenda by 2030. The Women in Environmental Sciences network engaged women from culturally and professionally diverse backgrounds at two workshops held in the UK in 2018 and 2019. The interdisciplinary environmental sciences’ meeting included presentations by leading women in academic and non-academic organizations. Through breakout sessions, effective interaction, and discussions between professionals and grassroots, an atmosphere of “leaving no one behind” was created. Participants’ ages ranged from 18 to 55 years and more than 65% of the participants were under 35 years old, representing the productive working group. The mixed group of young and the old, academic and non-academic women provided a basis for insightful and lively discussions needed to bridge the gap between information disseminated to professionals and non-professionals, to students, and early career researchers. In this article, the following information are presented: Relevant literature in view of gender equality and environmental aspects, summary of the talks and discussions, how the talks aligned with the sustainable development goals (SDGs) and sub-targets, issues identified and avenues for change, evaluation and some quotations from the participants. The article showcases the opportunity for the implementation of SDGs in all organizations through the promotion of integrated discussions on environmental science aspects, gender, equality, diversity, inclusion, partnerships needed to inform effective policy changes at local, national, or global levels. This article provides insights to professionals/non-professionals, governmental, non-governmental organizations, higher education institutions, and local communities and women. By providing a summary of the talks and their alignment with SDGs, the Women in Environmental Sciences provide new ways of engagement required at these times to develop applied and strategic research, and open a dimension of how the SDGs can be implemented to cope with changing environmental conditions.

Properties of the Continuous Assessment of Interpersonal Dynamics Across Sex, Level of Familiarity, and Interpersonal Conflict

The Continuous Assessment of Interpersonal Dynamics (CAID) is a method in which trained observers continuously code the dominance and warmth of individuals who interact with one another in dyads. This method has significant promise for assessing dynamic interpersonal processes. The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of individual sex, dyadic familiarity, and situational conflict on patterns of interpersonal warmth, dominance, and complementarity as assessed via CAID. We used six samples with 603 dyads, including two samples of unacquainted mixed-sex undergraduates interacting in a collaborative task, two samples of couples interacting in both collaborative and conflict tasks, and two samples of mothers and children interacting in both collaborative and conflict tasks. Complementarity effects were robust across all samples, and individuals tended to be relatively warm and dominant. Results from multilevel models indicated that women were slightly warmer than men, whereas there were no sex differences in dominance. Unfamiliar dyads and dyads interacting in more collaborative tasks were relatively warmer, more submissive, and more complementary on warmth but less complementary on dominance. These findings speak to the utility of the CAID method for assessing interpersonal dynamics and provide norms for researchers who use the method for different types of samples and applications.

Stroke Survivors on Twitter: Sentiment and Topic Analysis From a Gender Perspective

BACKGROUND

Stroke is the worldwide leading cause of long-term disabilities. Women experience more activity limitations, worse health-related quality of life, and more poststroke depression than men. Twitter is increasingly used by individuals to broadcast their day-to-day happenings, providing unobtrusive access to samples of spontaneously expressed opinions on all types of topics and emotions.

OBJECTIVE

This study aimed to consider the raw frequencies of words in the collection of tweets posted by a sample of stroke survivors and to compare the posts by gender of the survivor for 8 basic emotions (anger, fear, anticipation, surprise, joy, sadness, trust and disgust); determine the proportion of each emotion in the collection of tweets and statistically compare each of them by gender of the survivor; extract the main topics (represented as sets of words) that occur in the collection of tweets, relative to each gender; and assign happiness scores to tweets and topics (using a well-established tool) and compare them by gender of the survivor.

METHODS

We performed sentiment analysis based on a state-of-the-art lexicon (National Research Council) with syuzhet R package. The emotion scores for men and women were first subjected to an F-test and then to a Wilcoxon rank sum test. We extended the emotional analysis, assigning happiness scores with the hedonometer (a tool specifically designed considering Twitter inputs). We calculated daily happiness average scores for all tweets. We created a term map for an exploratory clustering analysis using VosViewer software. We performed structural topic modelling with stm R package, allowing us to identify main topics by gender. We assigned happiness scores to all the words defining the main identified topics and compared them by gender.

RESULTS

We analyzed 800,424 tweets posted from August 1, 2007 to December 1, 2018, by 479 stroke survivors: Women (n=244) posted 396,898 tweets, and men (n=235) posted 403,526 tweets. The stroke survivor condition and gender as well as membership in at least 3 stroke-specific Twitter lists of active users were manually verified for all 479 participants. Their total number of tweets since 2007 was 5,257,433; therefore, we analyzed the most recent 15.2% of all their tweets. Positive emotions (anticipation, trust, and joy) were significantly higher (P<.001) in women, while negative emotions (disgust, fear, and sadness) were significantly higher (P<.001) in men in the analysis of raw frequencies and proportion of emotions. Happiness mean scores throughout the considered period show higher levels of happiness in women. We calculated the top 20 topics (with percentages and CIs) more likely addressed by gender and found that women's topics show higher levels of happiness scores.

CONCLUSIONS

We applied two different approaches-the Plutchik model and hedonometer tool-to a sample of stroke survivors' tweets. We conclude that women express positive emotions and happiness much more than men.

Let's Get Digital: Understanding Adolescent Romantic Relationships Using Naturalistic Assessments of Digital Communication

Adolescent romantic relationships involve complex patterns of interaction. Innovative technological advances offer opportunities to capture features and dynamics of these relationships that traditional research methods have not addressed. With the explosion of digital communication platforms (e.g., mobile texting, direct messaging, social media applications), researchers can now observe and understand adolescent relationships in vivo, offering for the first time a naturalistic lens into adolescent worlds. Recognizing this scientific opportunity, in this article, we 1) discuss the potential theoretical and methodological benefits of collecting and coding digital communication data to understand adolescent romantic relationships, 2) suggest ways to use these data to develop innovative prevention tools, and 3) address potential challenges in collecting digital communication data from adolescents.

Mining a Crowdsourced Dictionary to Understand Consistency and Preference in Word Meanings

Big data approaches to psychology have become increasing popular (Jones, 2017). Two of the main developments of this line of research is the advent of distributional models of semantics (e.g., Landauer and Dumais, 1997), which learn the meaning of words from large text corpora, and the collection of mega datasets of human behavior (e.g., The English lexicon project; Balota et al., 2007). The current article combines these two approaches, with the goal being to understand the consistency and preference that people have for word meanings. This was accomplished by mining a large amount of data from an online, crowdsourced dictionary and analyzing this data with a distributional model. Overall, it was found that even for words that are not an active part of the language environment, there is a large amount of consistency in the word meanings that different people have. Additionally, it was demonstrated that users of a language have strong preferences for word meanings, such that definitions to words that do not conform to people’s conceptions are rejected by a community of language users. The results of this article provides insights into the cultural evolution of word meanings, and sheds light on alternative methodologies that can be used to understand lexical behavior.

The Future of Technology in Positive Psychology: Methodological Advances in the Science of Well-Being

Advances in biotechnology and information technology are poised to transform well-being research. This article reviews the technologies that we predict will have the most impact on both measurement and intervention in the field of positive psychology over the next decade. These technologies include: psychopharmacology, non-invasive brain stimulation, virtual reality environments, and big-data methods for large-scale multivariate analysis. Some particularly relevant potential costs and benefits to individual and collective well-being are considered for each technology as well as ethical considerations. As these technologies may substantially enhance the capacity of psychologists to intervene on and measure well-being, now is the time to discuss the potential promise and pitfalls of these technologies.

How to Identify Hot Topics in Psychology Using Topic Modeling

Abstract. Latent topics and trends in psychological publications were examined to identify hotspots in psychology. Topic modeling was contrasted with a classification-based scientometric approach in order to demonstrate the benefits of the former. Specifically, the psychological publication output in the German-speaking countries containing German- and English-language publications from 1980 to 2016 documented in the PSYNDEX database was analyzed. Topic modeling based on latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) was applied to a corpus of 314,573 publications. Input for topic modeling was the controlled terms of the publications, that is, a standardized vocabulary of keywords in psychology. Based on these controlled terms, 500 topics were determined and trending topics were identified. Hot topics, indicated by the highest increasing trends in this data, were facets of neuropsychology, online therapy, cross-cultural aspects, traumatization, and visual attention. In conclusion, the findings indicate that topics can reveal more detailed insights into research trends than standardized classifications. Possible applications of this method, limitations, and implications for research synthesis are discussed.

Public Perceptions Regarding Use of Virtual Reality in Health Care: A Social Media Content Analysis Using Facebook

Background

Virtual reality (VR) technology provides an immersive environment that enables users to have modified experiences of reality. VR is increasingly used to manage patients with pain, disability, obesity, neurologic dysfunction, anxiety, and depression. However, public opinion regarding the use of VR in health care has not been explored. Understanding public opinion of VR is critical to ensuring effective implementation of this emerging technology.

Objective

This study aimed to examine public opinion about health care VR using social listening, a method that allows for the exploration of unfiltered views of topics discussed on social media and online forums.

Methods

In March 2016, NBC News produced a video depicting the use of VR for patient care. The video was repackaged by NowThis, a social media news website, and distributed on Facebook by Upworthy, a news aggregator, yielding 4.3 million views and 2401 comments. We used Microsoft Excel Power Query and ATLAS.ti software (version 7.5, Scientific Software Development) to analyze the comments using content analysis and categorized the comments around first-, second-, and third-order concepts. We determined self-identified gender from the user’s Facebook page and performed sentiment analysis of the language to analyze whether the perception of VR differed by gender using a Pearson’s chi-square test.

Results

Out of the 1614 analyzable comments, 1021 (63.26%) were attributed to female Facebook users, 572 (35.44%) to male users, and 21 (1.30%) to users of unknown gender. There were 1197 comments coded as expressing a positive perception about VR (74.16%), 251 coded as expressing a negative perception and/or concern (15.56%), and 560 coded as neutral (34.70%). Informants identified 20 use cases for VR in health care, including the use of VR for pain and stress reduction; bed-bound individuals; women during labor; and patients undergoing chemotherapy, dialysis, radiation, or imaging procedures. Negative comments expressed concerns about radiation, infection risk, motion sickness, and the ubiquity of and overall dependence on technology. There was a statistically significant association between the language valence of the Facebook post and the gender of the Facebook user; men were more likely to post negative perceptions about the use of VR for health care, whereas women were more likely to post positive perceptions (P<.001).

Conclusions

Most informants expressed positive perceptions about the use of VR in a wide range of health care settings. However, many expressed concerns that should be acknowledged and addressed as health care VR continues to evolve. Our results provide guidance in determining where further research on the use of VR in patient care is needed, and offer a formal opportunity for public opinion to shape the VR research agenda.

The Language of Religious Affiliation

Religious affiliation is an important identifying characteristic for many individuals and relates to numerous life outcomes including health, well-being, policy positions, and cognitive style. Using methods from computational linguistics, we examined language from 12,815 Facebook users in the United States and United Kingdom who indicated their religious affiliation. Religious individuals used more positive emotion words ( β = .278, p < .0001) and social themes such as family ( β = .242, p < .0001), while nonreligious people expressed more negative emotions like anger ( β = −.427, p < .0001) and categories related to cognitive processes, like tentativeness ( β = −.153, p < .0001). Nonreligious individuals also used more themes related to the body ( β = −.265, p < .0001) and death ( β = −.247, p < .0001). The findings offer directions for future research on religious affiliation, specifically in terms of social, emotional, and cognitive differences.