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Comparison of expressive writing after the terrorist attacks of September <sup>11th</sup> and March 11<sup>th1</sup>

Abstract:

This descriptive study of populations through survey research examined expressive writing in the interval between 3 and 8 weeks after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11th 2001, and after a series of bomb attacks on commuter trains in Madrid on March 11th 2004 (n = 325 participants from the USA, and n = 333 from Spain). The aim of the research was to analyze expressive writing with regard to pronouns, feelings, thoughts and social processes in the wake of the terrorist attacks. Analysis with the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) program showed that the Spanish participants reported more social processes and used more second and third-person pronouns, whilst the American participants more commonly used the first person. Correlations of the emotions with the cognitive processes confirmed how the feelings are associated with the thoughts. The results corroborated that the dynamics of sharing and feeling were similar in the two countries in the period from 3 to 8 weeks after the attacks. Implications for possible cultural differences between individualistic and collectivistic societies are discussed. © International Journal of Clinical and Health Psychology.