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Legacy tokens, artifacts written by offenders of mass shootings, provide a window through which violent behavior can be examined from the perspective of the offender. Many previous studies have investigated legacy tokens qualitatively, yet surprisingly few have conducted computerized text-analyses. Further, past work has yet to evaluate text-based differences between types of offenders, principally between those who commit suicide or survive a mass shooting event. The present study intends to use a quantitative approach to exploring these differences by using the closed-content, text analysis software, Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC). To accomplish this, legacy tokens will be harvested from an online database, verified by at least one other internet source, and submitted to LIWC for analysis. Legacy tokens between offender types will be compared based on language style categories shown to indicate emotionality, cognitive complexity, and attention allocation.

Faculty Mentor: Thomas Holtgraves

Department of Psychological Science

Graduate