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No person can be summed up in mere sentences, but obituaries offer a glimpse into how we’re remembered. In A Nutshell

Your final 175 words capture cultural values. Researchers analyzed 38 million obituaries spanning 30 years to reveal what American society collectively values about a meaningful life, and how major crises like 9/11 and COVID-19 shifted those values.

Religion and caring dominate American obituaries. Tradition (particularly religious faith) appeared in 80% of obituaries, while benevolence (caring for others) appeared in 76%, far more than achievement, power, or pleasure.

COVID-19 permanently changed how we remember the dead. Benevolence language in obituaries dropped sharply one month into the pandemic and still hasn’t recovered four years later, despite widespread prosocial behavior during the crisis.

Gender stereotypes follow us beyond death. Men are remembered more for achievement, power, and conformity. Women are remembered more for caring and pleasure. Men’s obituaries show dramatic changes across the lifespan; women’s remain remarkably stable.

The average person lives about 4,000 weeks. When they die, that entire existence is usually compressed into roughly 175 words. Put another way, an obituary. Chosen by loved ones, those words become the final public record of a life, capturing what mattered most and what made that life worth living.

Researchers analyzed 38 million obituaries written over nearly 30 years to answer one question: What do Americans value most about a life well lived?

Their findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, show Americans are overwhelmingly remembered for tradition, particularly religious faith, and for benevolence, or caring for others. Those two values dominated obituaries more than any others, appearing in 80% and 76% of death notices.

Religion and Tradition Dominate American Obituaries

Religion and tradition topped every other value when researchers examined what people chose to emphasize about the deceased. Words like “faithful,” “church,” “Bible,” and “praying” appeared far more frequently than terms related to achievement, power, or personal pleasure.

David Markowitz, a Michigan State University communication professor who led the study alongside colleagues from Boston College and Arizona State University, used a validated dictionary based on psychologist Shalom Schwartz’s theory of basic human values. This framework identifies 10 universal values that serve as guiding principles in life.

After tradition and benevolence, the next most common values were universalism (36% of obituaries), self-direction (30%), and hedonism (28%). Values like power and stimulation appeared in less than a quarter of obituaries.

When forced to compress a life into a few paragraphs, people gravitate toward what provided meaning and structure. For many Americans, that meant faith communities and religious practice.

Cultural Crises Changed How Americans Remember the Dead

Major cultural events didn’t just shape how people lived. They changed how survivors remembered the dead.

Security-related language in obituaries dropped after the September 11 terrorist attacks and stayed below baseline for a year. Meanwhile, references to tradition and benevolence increased. New Yorkers who died after 9/11 were written about with notably more benevolence language than people who died elsewhere, showing how proximity to tragedy shapes memory.

The 2008 financial crisis created a different pattern. Achievement-related language gradually declined in obituaries starting about a month after the crisis began. Hedonism language dipped during the crisis but rebounded after one year, possibly reflecting a psychological shift as people began focusing on satisfaction rather than survival.

Even in death, male and female gender stereotypes persist. (Photo by Mayron Oliveira on Unsplash) COVID-19’s Lasting Impact on Memory

The pandemic created the most substantial shifts in how Americans remembered their dead. One month into COVID-19, benevolence language in obituaries fell noticeably compared with pre-pandemic levels. Three months in, it was still clearly lower, and four years later, it still hasn’t recovered.

This creates a puzzling contradiction. During the pandemic, communities made extraordinary sacrifices for collective good. People wore masks, socially distanced, and supported essential workers. Yet obituaries became less likely to emphasize caring for others.

Researchers propose this disconnect reveals something about how crisis affects memory. When social connections are disrupted, articulating the caring behaviors that typically make benevolence visible becomes harder. The capacity to act benevolently and the ability to recognize it in someone’s legacy may involve different psychological processes.

The pandemic also changed how people wrote about tradition. References to religion initially dropped, then surged above baseline after two years. Year 1 obituaries made general religious references using words like “bless” and “praying.” Year 2 obituaries shifted to detailed, religion-specific language like “Allah,” “Islam,” and “Jesus.”

How Gender and Age Shape What Gets Remembered

The same cultural scripts that guide how people are perceived in life follow them into death.

Men are remembered more for achievement, power, and conformity than women. Women are remembered more for benevolence and hedonism. These patterns align with research showing men are perceived as more competent while women are seen as warmer.

The conformity finding initially seems counterintuitive, but in obituaries, conformity language often contains words like “law,” “served,” and “directions,” reflecting military service and civic involvement rather than submissiveness.

Older people appear in obituaries with more tradition and conformity language but less self-direction and benevolence than younger people.

Most striking, women’s obituaries show minimal variation across the lifespan. Their value profiles remain relatively stable as they age. Men’s obituaries display dramatic age-related changes. The values emphasized for a man in his 30s look vastly different from those for a man in his 80s.

Obituaries written through a lens of competence focus on achievements and influence that accumulate with age. Those written through a lens of warmth emphasize family roles and personality traits that remain more constant.

Beyond Values: What Else Gets Remembered

Researchers identified other dominant themes in a random sample of 382,000 obituaries. Education appeared frequently, as did military service and phrases describing the deceased as beloved. These themes capture what people accomplished, how they served others, and their family connections.

Men’s obituaries contain about eight more words than women’s, replicating findings from earlier studies. Older people are written about at greater length than younger people.

These texts serve as more than individual remembrances. At scale, they function as cultural time capsules, preserving society’s evolving understanding of what makes a life meaningful.

Over nearly three decades, most personal values have gradually increased in obituaries. The exception is benevolence, which has decreased overall since 2019.

The Final 175 Words

The compression of human experience into obituary form is no small task. Every decision about which words to include reflects a judgment about what mattered, what made that person’s time on Earth worthwhile.

These choices aren’t random. They’re deeply intentional acts by people who knew the deceased best. When examined at scale, those choices reveal shared cultural values about legacy and meaning.

American culture increasingly values tradition and has grappled with how to remember people during and after collective trauma. Gender stereotypes about competence and warmth don’t just affect the living—they shape posthumous narratives for generations.

The pandemic’s impact on benevolence language shows widespread societal trauma doesn’t just change how people behave. It changes how survivors construct meaning around death, potentially making prosocial behavior harder to recognize and narrate even when it remains widespread.

Those 175 words do more than announce a death. They encode what a community believes about a life well lived, capturing a moment in our culture.

Paper Summary Limitations

The study analyzed obituaries from Legacy.com, a leading US platform, though it may not capture all demographic groups equally. Obituaries tend to overrepresent certain populations, including those with greater financial resources and access to obituary platforms. The research was limited to the United States and may not reflect patterns in other countries with different cultural values and traditions.

Gender was predicted from names rather than directly reported, which could introduce some classification errors. The analysis could not examine certain demographic factors like race, income, or political orientation due to data limitations. Effect sizes were generally small, though researchers note that small effects at this scale can still reveal meaningful cultural patterns.

The study examined correlations between cultural events and obituary content but cannot establish causation. While the research identified patterns before and after events like 9/11 and COVID-19, other factors may have contributed to the observed changes.

Funding and Disclosures

The authors declare no competing interests. The study was supported by standard academic research funding channels. Based on the data acquisition agreement, the underlying obituary data cannot be made publicly available, though researchers interested in collaboration may contact the corresponding author to discuss limited access for specific analytical purposes.

Publication Information

Authors: David M. Markowitz (Department of Communication, Michigan State University), Thomas Mazzuchi (Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Boston College), Stylianos Syropoulos (School of Sustainability, College of Global Futures, Arizona State University), Kyle Fiore Law (School of Sustainability, College of Global Futures, Arizona State University), and Liane Young (Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Boston College)

Journal Citation: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), 2025, Vol. 122, No. 35, e2510318122 | DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2510318122 | Publication Date: August 26, 2025 | Data Source: 38,245,928 obituaries from Legacy.com spanning 1998-2024, containing 6,674,954,213 total words