The Phrase “Committed Suicide" is Judged as More Applicable to Suicides Depicted as Immoral
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This research investigated the endorsement of the phrases “committed suicide” and “died by suicide” in relation to different suicide storylines. One hundred and eighty-eight MacEwan University students were randomly assigned to one of four experimental conditions, with conditions differing in the fictional account of a death by suicide that was read by participants. The storylines were systematically varied regarding whether the suicide was depicted as immoral or neutral and regarding whether the suicide involved a librarian or researcher. After reading their assigned storyline, participants rated six statement-pairs in terms of which would be preferred by the family of the deceased, with statements in each pair differing only in the use of either the phrase “committed suicide” or “died by suicide”. In a separate part of the study, participants judged whether “died by suicide” or “committed suicide” suggested that suicide is immoral and then they rated the degree to which the phrases “committed suicide” and “died by suicide” suggested immorality, wrongdoing, illegality, and sinfulness. As hypothesized, participants in the immoral suicide scenario condition endorsed the phrase “committed suicide” over “died by suicide” more than those in the neutral condition. The majority of participants selected the phrase “committed suicide” as suggesting suicide is immoral. Lastly, the phrase “committed suicide” was seen as connoting higher levels of immorality, wrongdoing, illegality, and sinfulness compared to “died by suicide.” Findings have potential implications for stigma reduction and help-seeking. Department: Psychology Faculty Mentor: Dr. Andrew Howell
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.028 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".