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Obituaries Protect the things families want to remember most about the people they love most. In time they also reveal that Value Every era chose to honor.
In a study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, we analyzed 38 million obituaries of Americans published from 1998 to 2024. We identified the values that families often highlight, and how those values change across generations, regions, and key historical events.
Specifically, working with psychologists Lianne Young and Thomas Mazzucchi, we examined the language used on Legacy.com, an online forum where families often post tributes and share memories of loved ones.
During their lifetime, most people are guided by a small set of broad values such as caring for others, respecting tradition, keeping loved ones safe, and seeking personal growth. To understand how these values appear in memory, we used text-analysis tools built on curated lists of everyday words people use when talking about those topics.
By analyzing the words that appear repeatedly in memorials, we can see what values communities chose to emphasize when looking back on the lives of their loved ones, and how those patterns changed over time. Because the dataset included 38 million obituaries, the analysis ran on a supercomputer.
In nearly 30 years of tributes, words related to the value “tradition” appeared most frequently – many tributes described religious participation and enduring customs. Words related to the value of “benevolence” – caring for the welfare of others – were also consistently prominent. In fact, tradition and altruism constituted the dominant value profile in the dataset: they appeared in more than 70% of the obituaries. In contrast, value-related words such as “achievement” and “power” appear much less frequently.
Historical events left their mark. After the September 11, 2001 attacks, language families were more likely to miss loved ones who had moved than during the period immediately before the attacks – and those changes persisted for at least a year. Words related to the value “security” – including words such as “survival,” “health” and “order” – appear less frequently. Additionally, families were more likely to use language related to values such as “philanthropy” and “tradition.” Words like “caring,” “loyal” and “service” appeared more frequently. These changes were particularly strong in New York, where the attacks had the most direct impact.
However, COVID-19 brought about the most dramatic changes. Starting in March 2020, philanthropy-related language – including words like “love,” “empathy” and “family” – declined precipitously, and has not been the same since. Tradition-related language — words like “service,” “faith” and “heritage” — also declined initially, then rose above baseline levels during the latter stages of the pandemic.
These changes suggest that collective disruptions influence the moral vocabulary used by families in commemorating loved ones. They change what it means to live a good life.
About the authors
Stylianos Syropoulos is an assistant professor of psychology at Arizona State University.
David Markowitz is Associate Professor of Communication at Michigan State University.
Kyle Fiore Law is a Postdoctoral Research Scholar in Sustainability at Arizona State University.
This article is republished from Conversation Under Creative Commons license. read the original article,
We also found differences that reflect stereotypes about gender and age. Men’s obituaries included more language associated with achievement, conformity, and power. Meanwhile, tributes to women included more language associated with philanthropy and enjoying the pleasures of life.
Older people are often remembered for valuing tradition. Young adults, on the other hand, are often remembered more for valuing the well-being of all people and nature and for being motivated to think and act independently. Price patterns in men’s obituaries shifted more across the lifespan than women’s. In other words, the values highlighted in the obituaries of young and older men differed more from each other, while women’s value profile remained relatively consistent across age.
why it matters
The most visited part of print newspapers and online memorial sites, obituaries reveal what society values at different points in time.
This study contributes to the broader scientific understanding of heritage. People often have strong preferences about how they want to be remembered, but little is known about how they are actually remembered, partly because large-scale evidence about actual memorials is rare. Our analysis of millions of obituaries helps fill that gap.
what will happen next
Obituaries allow researchers to explore cultural values across time, geography, and social groups. Future work could examine differences by race and occupation as well as across regions. It can also look at earlier times using historical obituary Archives, such as those preserved in old newspapers and local records.
Another direction is to investigate whether highlighting how often kindness appears in obituaries might motivate people to be more caring in daily life.
Understanding what sticks in memory helps clarify what people consider meaningful; Those values shape how they choose to live.