Sadness and Anxiety Language in R eddit Messages Before and After Quitting a Job (2023)

Abstract: People globally quit their jobs at high rates during the COVID-19 pandemic, yet there is scant research about emotional trajectories surrounding voluntary resignations before or during that era. To explore long-term emotional language patterns before and after quitting a job, we amassed a Reddit sample of people who indicated resigning on a specific day (n = 7,436), each of whom was paired with a comparison user matched on posting history. After excluding people on the basis of low posting frequency and word count, we analyzed 150.3 million words (53.1% from 5,134 target users who indicated quitting) using SALLEE, a dictionary-based syntax-aware tool, and Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) dictionaries. Based on posts in the year before and after quitting, people who had quit their jobs used more sadness and anxiety language than matched comparison users. Lower rates of “I” pronouns and cognitive processing language were associated with less sadness and anxiety surrounding quitting. Emotional trajectories during and before the pandemic were parallel, though pandemic messages were more negative. The results have relevance for strategic self-distancing as a means of regulating negative emotions around major life changes.

## introduction leaving a job is a major crossroads in adult life. though in hindsight most people view their choice positively (e.g., with respect to improved career opportunities, pay, and job satisfaction; @xcite , voluntarily resigning is nevertheless a stressful and consequential life transition. like other major life changes, the social turmoil and financial uncertainty that come with quitting a job are universal, but there are better and worse ways to cope with the emotional fallout. in the last few years, the psychology of quitting has been complicated by what some have called the great resignation. in the united states, voluntary resignation rates have been increasing linearly since the mid-2000s, peaking in 2021, the second year of the pandemic @xcite ; indeed, the main difference between pre-pandemic and pandemic-era quitting may be increased likelihood of leaving the labor market entirely @xcite . whether pandemic-era quitting is the culmination of a decades-long trend or a phenomenon triggered by the pandemic is still being debated @xcite . what is clearer is that people who chose to leave their jobs in the last few years did so against the backdrop of ongoing social, emotional, and economic upheavals related to the covid-19 pandemic. a large part of the great resignation narrative centers on debates about work culture and work-life balance that are occurring on social media platforms like reddit @xcite . despite plenty of media dialogue on the subject, there is scarce psychological research on the great resignation specifically or the emotions involved in quitting more broadly. research on quitting or voluntary turnover has historically focused more on antecedents than a broader window considering individuals' psychology before and following resignation @xcite . earlier research found that quitting results from low or declining job satisfaction @xcite , burnout related to overwork or high-stress responsibilities at work, a lack of work-life balance (especially difficulty disengaging from work when away from the workplace; @xcite , and more attractive job opportunities @xcite . pandemic-era quitting seems to follow a similar course, though burnout related to employers who are perceived as exploitative and covid-related burnout have become more salient as the pandemic has increased work-related stress for many employees and employers @xcite . the following paper introduces the reddit job change corpus, a sample that includes all reddit submissions and comments from individuals who discussed leaving or being fired from a job on a specific day in addition to the same complete history from matched comparison users (i.e., people with similar posting histories as the target users who had never discussed leaving a job). the present paper focuses on a subsample of users who indicated quitting (voluntarily leaving) their jobs. as an initial illustration of how the corpus can be used to answer questions about emotional language over time, we explored how rates of sadness and anxiety words vary as a function of two baseline individual differences relevant to emotion regulation: self-focus and cognitive processing. finally, we compared sad and anxious language between pandemic-era and earlier quitting. ## background pronouns are intimately linked with affective language and emotion regulation. in the context of negative affect, first-person singular pronouns (e.g., i, me, my; sometimes called "i"-words) tend to be more closely linked with avoidant emotions such as fear and sadness @xcite than approach emotions such as anger @xcite . in the view that emotions prepare people for pragmatic actions, avoidant emotions such as disgust, fear, and sadness compel people to withdraw from noxious or harmful stimuli, whereas approach emotions such as desire, joy, and anger impel people to engage with the emotional stimulus @xcite . people who use more first-person singular pronouns in everyday conversations and writing tend to be more vulnerable to stress and more prone to affect regulation disorders, such as depression @xcite . shifting from a first-person to more distant perspective seems to be a healthy coping strategy when experiencing negative emotions or recounting distressing events. for example, in the expressive writing paradigm, people benefit more from writing about traumatic events when they shift perspectives rather than remaining fixed in a first-person mindset @xcite . selfdistancing research similarly shows that people naturally use less "i" when writing or talking about distressing memories, a strategy that reduces negative emotions in the moment in both naturalistic and experimental studies @xcite . whether self-focus is a product or cause of distress or mental health conditions such as depression has been rigorously debated in psychology. early theories on depressive realism and aversive self-focus argued that viewing the world and especially the self realistically was distressing; in that view, anyone, regardless of trait negative affectivity or neuroticism, would be disturbed by heightened self-awareness @xcite . later research qualified those findings, showing that the aversiveness of self-awareness and the tendency towards self-focus after failure but not success were specific to people predisposed to negative affect regulation conditions such as depression @xcite . in summary, self-focus appears to be harmful when distressed but not otherwise @xcite , is correlated with trait negative affectivity @xcite , and can be strategically decreased to help downregulate negative emotions @xcite . cognitive processing language (e.g., think, know), like self-focus, is not altogether harmful or helpful but can become risky in the context of stress and negative affect. talking through thought processes can help make sense of emotionally complex issues (e.g., in expressive writing; @xcite , and cognitive reappraisal can be a valuable tool for regulating emotions @xcite . however, chronically high cognitive processing language in conversations (such as in letters or social media messages)-especially in conjunction with negative emotional language-may reflect the kind of rumination (i.e., repetitive, intrusive, inward-focused negative thoughts; watkins and roberts, 2020) that characterizes affect regulation disorders such as depression @xcite . reddit is an increasingly popular resource for social-behavioral scientists interested in analyzing publicly accessible language use surrounding major life events such as romantic breakups @xcite , community crises such as the covid-19 pandemic @xcite , and mental health conditions including depression, anxiety, and suicidality (e.g., @xcite . though reddit's active user base continues to skew young, american, and male, it is more diverse in terms of ethnic backgrounds, nationalities, and age than typical convenience samples in psychology, such as undergraduate students @xcite . more importantly for collecting conversations about risky and distressing topics, such as ending a relationship or quitting a job, reddit usernames are typically anonymous, which enables people to discuss negative experiences frankly with few concerns about social or legal risks. social media analyses also facilitate real-time tracking of changes in social movements. for example, topic analyses of reddit messages showed that conversations about leaving one's job became more focused on mental health and negative experiences at work after the start of the pandemic (del @xcite . like many social media platforms, reddit's popularity increased globally during the covid-19 pandemic. reddit has also become a hub for social movements related to what's become known as the great resignation (e.g., r/antiwork; @xcite . though, to many, mass resignations appeared to be a zeitgeist triggered by the socioeconomic conditions of covid, employment data suggest that covid-era resignations are not unique but are a continuation of linearly increasing voluntary turnover rates dating back to at least a decade before covid @xcite . thus, in addition to the primary aim of exploring negative emotional language before and after quitting, a secondary goal of this project was to examine whether negative emotion trajectories differed as a function of quitting era (pre-pandemic or during the covid-19 pandemic). ## method the sections below first summarize the methods used to assemble the reddit job change corpus and then discuss the narrower subsample that we focused on in the present analyses. last, language measures and analytic strategies are described. ## results we first regressed emotional language on user set (target versus comparison users) and week in a main effects model. individuals who discussed quitting their jobs on reddit used more sadness [f(1, 3966.2) = 32.93] and anxiety language [f(1, 3935.2) = 261.1] than did matched comparisons across the 2-year time span, and quadratic effects were the best fit for both anxiety [f(2, 289357) = 32.22] and sadness [f(2, 290720.1) = 51.7], all @xmath0.0001. ## discussion the results illustrate the potential uses of a new corpus of reddit messages written by two groups of people: those who indicated on reddit that they had left their jobs (voluntarily or not) and matched comparison users with similar posting histories who had not discussed a job change. though the findings are correlational, they have potential relevance for future interventions aimed at helping people cope with career changes and other stressful life events more effectively. examining emotional language in the year before and after quitting showed that people who quit their jobs used more anxiety and sadness language than matched comparison users, and these differences were largest for people using high rates of "i" pronouns at baseline. our results build on self-distancing and expressive writing research to suggest that avoiding self-focus @xcite or flexibly regulating perspectives by changing personal pronouns @xcite may help people experience less distress as they prepare for major life changes. anxious language before and in the weeks immediately surrounding quitting was highest for those using high rates of cognitive language at baseline, relative to both comparison users and people with low baseline rates of cognitive language. words such as think and wonder reflect self-insight and sense-making in diaries, therapy, or expressive writing @xcite but may be more reflective of hedging (e.g., "i think"), uncer-tainty (e.g., "i guess"), and rumination in everyday social contexts, such as reddit (dean and boyd, 2020). people with larger negative emotional vocabularies tend to also use more cognitive processing language @xcite . though our results are preliminary, they support the conjecture that cognitive language may be risky in some social contexts, such as social media. together, our findings suggest that predictive models aiming to predict specific life events or linguistic sentiment may produce more accurate or precise results if moderation by pronouns and cognitive language are considered. exploring possible psychological moderators is especially consequential in transparent models, such as regression or structural equation modeling, where the aim is to model and interpret every feature in depthunderstanding each variable's relation to the outcome and other predictors as well as its variance structure-in order to facilitate psychological and behavioral insights @xcite . methodologically, this project illustrates potential uses of sallee, a new sentiment analysis approach used primarily in industry settings @xcite . sallee integrates practical aspects of both traditional dictionary-based emotion measures and syntax-aware techniques that such lexicons typically lack. like other top-down methods, sallee is relatively transparent and face-valid, including only words with explicit emotional content (e.g., lonely and wept for sadness), in contrast with data-driven approaches that often assign sentiment weights to superficially neutral words. face validity is not a panacea, and seemingly unambiguous emotion terms may have different implications across different contexts @xcite ; however, using explicitly emotional words facilitates straightforward interpretation of results and lowers the adoption barrier for researchers who are new to sentiment analysis. we should note, however, that machine learning or open-vocabulary methods often outperform dictionary approaches in cases with sparse words, novel contexts, and many low-frequency or out-ofvocabulary words (see @xcite . ## conclusion analyses of naturalistic language used in messages on reddit in the year before and after voluntarily leaving a job showed that people who used the most self-references and cognitive processing language at baseline used more sad and anxious language in the months surrounding quitting. consistent with research on self-distancing and rumination, low rates of self-referential pronouns and cognitive processing language may be part of a broader pattern of healthy coping with stress and negative emotion. finally, emotional trajectories for quitting before and after the start of the covid-19 pandemic were parallel, but pandemic messages were more negative overall. beyond the psychological implications of this research, methodologically, we have contributed a new publicly-available reddit corpus and a reliable method for identifying the timing of major life events discussed on social media.