With the former San Diego Chargers now playing in Los Angeles, the stadium in the Mission Valley area of San Diego goes mostly unused. San Diego State University (SDSU) has made suggestions for expanding its College area campus to a Mission Valley campus. A recent news article in an SDSU publication about this proposal can be found here.
The proposal for revitalizing this area of San Diego is somewhat controversial, as are other proposals, each with its own constituency. It’s of interest to use EffectCheck® to evaluate the likely emotional response a reader would have from reading this particular SDSU news report on their proposal.
Overall, as shown in Figure 1, when scored in the category of business articles, EffectCheck assesses the article as evoking high confidence, compassion, and happiness, along with low anxiety, hostility, and depression. This is likely reassuring to the author, who is advocating for SDSU’s proposal.
Figure 1. EffectCheck overall analysis of the SDSU news story for revitalizing Mission Valley.
Furthermore, a 100-word moving window analysis shows consistently high levels of evoked confidence, compassion, and happiness, and consistently low levels of anxiety, hostility, and depression. Here again, EffectCheck confirms what the author was likely aspiring for.
Figure 2. The 100-word moving window analysis of the SDSU story, showing consistently high levels of evoked confidence, compassion, and happiness, and low levels of anxiety, hostility, and depression.
Of note, however, is the emotional collapse that occurs into the close of the article, where (even briefly) hostility, anxiety, and depression are on top of confidence, compassion, and happiness. This occurs as a result of the penultimate paragraph, which reads:
The river never really cooperated, he said, as evidenced by the fact that the site frequently floods during stormy weather. Carrier envisions restoring the river’s natural winds and bends within the Mission Valley river park and allowing the park itself to act as a natural floodplain. Allowing the river to dictate development means finger parks will bring nature and green space into the campus.
This is then followed by a closing paragraph on the topic of rerouting the river. What is missing is one additional paragraph that would have summarized the entire objective and the plans that SDSU has in store for the area. This could have completed the article clearly evoking confidence, compassion, and happiness at high levels.
