In the past nine years, many Americans have struggled to define the singular emotions that overwhelmed them as they helplessly watched the World Trade Center fall to the September 11 terrorist attacks. Now, a less-than-sentimental examination of text messages on that day has pinned it down—they were mad.
According to a recently released study, The Emotional Timeline of September 11, 2001 (subscription required), anger was the chief emotion of Americans on September 11, 2001, with levels of sadness and anxiety fluctuating throughout the day. Anger, however, increased over time as more information about the disaster became available.
The study, conducted by researchers from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz “analyzed the use of emotional words in the messages sent to text pagers within the United States on September 11.” They assessed more than 6.4 million words for emotional content in an attempt to track the roller coaster of feelings on that emotional day. The text messages were made public on the WikiLeaks website last year.
“Anger was present as soon as the first airplane crashed into the WTC and it continued,” the authors wrote. “The expression of anger steadily and strongly increased with ongoing information regarding the terrorist attacks. Both of President Bush’s speeches (at 1:04 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.), which can be interpreted as a vicarious acting out of people’s anger, led only to a temporary pause in the increase of anger. In contrast to anxiety, anger never returned to its baseline level. Instead, anger accumulated over the course of the day and reached a level that was almost 10 times as high as at the start of September 11.”
In contrast, there was only a slight rise in sadness-related communication. Anxiety—after a brief spike in the morning—was virtually flat for the rest of the day. The authors speculate that anger might have helped people feel they had some control over the event. According to an analysis in Time, that could be a double-edged sword.
"On the one hand," the magazine quotes the authors as stating, "anger might have been helpful for regaining a sense of control over the tide of events … On the other hand, anger is known to predict moral outrage and a desire for vengeance, which—once aroused—seem to require an outlet."
Jolie Breeden is the lead editor and science communicator for Natural Hazards Center publications. She writes and edits for Research Counts; the Quick Response, Mitigation Matters, Public Health, and Weather Ready Research Award report series; as well as for special projects and publications. Breeden graduated summa cum laude from the University of Colorado Boulder with a bachelor’s degree in journalism.