Behaviour and markets: The interaction between sentiment analysis and ethical values?

Abstract

Financial scandals are prominently covered by the media, during which time the media becomes heavily involved in condemning the perpetrators. The language used to describe these scandals is often laden with negative sentiment, and much of this language carries ethical connotations. In this paper we explore the relationship between the use of emotive words and ethical words, focussing on financial crimes. Using the Enron Corporation as a case study, we show that evaluative terms describing things that are positive or negative are correlated with moral terms describing things that are virtuous or vicious. To explore the impact of these moral terms, we conduct a time series analysis and investigate the effect in changes of moral terms on Enron’s share price.