What a study! However, obituaries are often templated/patterned and the deceased or their survivors often like to portray the deceased as bigger/better than life etc. There is a tendency to assume wishful legacies or to please the trends of the time.
I have my doubts about the effects of Covid 19 on obituaries as described in this study.
"Summary
Why this matters:
- Obituaries function as time capsules that reflect what people, at any given moment in history, understand to be a life well-lived. By studying how obituaries evolve across time and context, we can gain deeper insight into how societies define a worthy life, express loss and pass on values across generations.
- New MSU-led research takes a novel approach to the psychological study of legacy by focusing on how individuals are actually remembered by others instead of how they wish to be remembered.
- Legacy motivations influence a range of real-world behaviors, from charitable giving to end-of-life decisions.
...
Benevolence has experienced a decrease in obituary appearances since 2019 — just before the COVID-19 pandemic — and has yet to recover. ...
Two years and four years after the pandemic, tradition increased and did not return to baseline. There was a strong link between COVID-19 deaths and tradition: As more people died during the pandemic, obituaries tended to focus more on religion and social norms and less on conformity. ..."
From the significance and abstract:
"Significance
What signals a life well lived? We addressed this question by examining millions of obituaries over time, across cultural events, and exploring how legacies were modified by demographics of the deceased.
The most prevalent personal value in obituaries was tradition (e.g., focusing on religion).
Cultural events, like the COVID-19 pandemic, linked to changes in legacy reflections as well. For example, care for close others (benevolence) decreased throughout the pandemic and never recovered, even 4 y after its start.
Finally, legacies of women showed minimal fluctuations with increased age; legacies of men showed more dynamic and systematic age-related changes over time. Obituaries tell an important psychological and cultural story about how societies remember others and what constitutes a meaningful life.
Abstract
How societies remember the dead can reveal what people value in life. We analyzed 38 million obituaries from the United States to examine how personal values are encoded in individual and collective legacies.
Using Schwartz’s theory of basic human values, we found that tradition and benevolence dominated legacy reflections, while values like power and stimulation appeared less frequently.
Major cultural events—the terrorist attacks of September 11th, the 2008 financial crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic—were systematically linked to changes in legacy reflections about personal values, with security declining after 9/11, achievement declining after the financial crisis, and benevolence declining for years after COVID-19 began and, to date, not yet returning to baseline.
Gender and age of the deceased were also linked to differences in legacy:
Men were remembered more for achievement, power, and conformity, while women were remembered more for benevolence and hedonism.
Older people were remembered more for tradition and conformity than younger people.
These patterns shifted dynamically across the lifespan, with obituaries for men showing more age-related variation than legacies for women.
Our findings reveal how obituaries serve as psychological and cultural time capsules, preserving not just individual legacies, but also indicating what US society values collectively regarding a life well lived."
MSU study: What obituaries reveal about a life well-lived (original news release)
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