The rise and fall of rationality in language

The rise and fall of rationality in language. Marten Scheffer, Ingrid van de Leemput, Els Weinans, and  View ORCID ProfileJohan Bollen. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, December 21, 2021 118 (51) e2107848118; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2107848118

Significance: The post-truth era has taken many by surprise. Here, we use massive language analysis to demonstrate that the rise of fact-free argumentation may perhaps be understood as part of a deeper change. After the year 1850, the use of sentiment-laden words in Google Books declined systematically, while the use of words associated with fact-based argumentation rose steadily. This pattern reversed in the 1980s, and this change accelerated around 2007, when across languages, the frequency of fact-related words dropped while emotion-laden language surged, a trend paralleled by a shift from collectivistic to individualistic language.

Abstract: The surge of post-truth political argumentation suggests that we are living in a special historical period when it comes to the balance between emotion and reasoning. To explore if this is indeed the case, we analyze language in millions of books covering the period from 1850 to 2019 represented in Google nGram data. We show that the use of words associated with rationality, such as “determine” and “conclusion,” rose systematically after 1850, while words related to human experience such as “feel” and “believe” declined. This pattern reversed over the past decades, paralleled by a shift from a collectivistic to an individualistic focus as reflected, among other things, by the ratio of singular to plural pronouns such as “I”/”we” and “he”/”they.” Interpreting this synchronous sea change in book language remains challenging. However, as we show, the nature of this reversal occurs in fiction as well as nonfiction. Moreover, the pattern of change in the ratio between sentiment and rationality flag words since 1850 also occurs in New York Times articles, suggesting that it is not an artifact of the book corpora we analyzed. Finally, we show that word trends in books parallel trends in corresponding Google search terms, supporting the idea that changes in book language do in part reflect changes in interest. All in all, our results suggest that over the past decades, there has been a marked shift in public interest from the collective to the individual, and from rationality toward emotion.

Keywords: languagerationalitysentimentcollectivityindividuality

Comments by Alex Tabarrok The Rise and Decline of Thinking over Feeling - Marginal REVOLUTION: The authors blame the change in language towards feelings on the failure of "neo-liberalism" which seems dubious and without plausible mechanism. If anything, I would put the causality the other way. A more plausible explanation is more female writers and the closely related feminization of culture.

Potential Drivers

Inferring the drivers of this stark pattern necessarily remains speculative, as language is affected by many overlapping social and cultural changes. Nonetheless, it is tempting to reflect on a few potential mechanisms. One possibility when it comes to the trends from 1850 to 1980 is that the rapid developments in science and technology and their socioeconomic benefits drove a rise in status of the scientific approach, which gradually permeated culture, society, and its institutions ranging from the education to politics. As argued early on by Max Weber, this may have led to a process of “disenchantment” as the role of spiritualism dwindled in modernized, bureaucratic, and secularized societies (21, 22).

What precisely caused the observed stagnation in the long-term trend around 1980 remains perhaps even more difficult to pinpoint. The late 1980s witnessed the start of the internet and its growing role in society. Perhaps more importantly, there could be a connection to tensions arising from neoliberal policies which were defended on rational arguments, while the economic fruits were reaped by an increasingly small fraction of societies (23⇓–25).

In many languages the trends in sentiment- and intuition-related words accelerate around 2007 (SI Appendix, section 9). One possible explanation could be that the standards for inclusion in Google Books shifted from “being in a library Google had an agreement with” to “from a publisher that directly deposited with Google” after 2004 to 2007, thus affecting the corpus composition. The 2007 shift also coincides with the global financial crisis which may have had an impact. However, earlier economic crises such as the Great Depression (1929 to 1939) did not leave discernable marks on our indicators of book language. Perhaps significantly, 2007 was also roughly the start of a near-universal global surge of social media. This may be illustrated by plotting the dynamics of the word “Facebook” as a marker alongside the frequency of a set of intuition and rationality flag words in different languages (SI Appendix, section 9).

Various lines of evidence underpin the plausibility of an impact of social media on emotions, interests, and worldviews. For instance, there may be negative effects of the use of social media on subjective well-being (26). This can in part be related to distortions such as the perception that your friends are more successful, have more friends, and are happier (27, 28) and more beautiful (29) than you are. At the same time, a perception that problems abound may have been fed by activist groups seeking to muster support (30) and lifestyle movements seeking to inspire alternative choices (31). For instance, social media catalyzed the Arab Spring, among other things, by depicting atrocities of the regime (32), jihadist videos motivate terrorists by showing gruesome acts committed by US soldiers (33), and veganism is promoted by social media campaigns highlighting appalling animal welfare issues (31). Many of the problems highlighted on social media will be real, and they may have been hidden from the public eye in the past. However, independently of whether problems are exaggerated or merely revealed online, the popular effect of such awareness campaigns may be the perception of an unfair world entangled in a multiplicity of crises. Further down the gradient from revelation to exaggeration we find misinformation. The spread of misinformation (34) and conspiracy theories (35) may be amplified by social media, as the online diffusion of false news is significantly broader, faster, and deeper than that of true news and efforts to debunk (36). Conspiracy theories originate particularly in times of uncertainty and crisis (35, 37) and generally depict established institutions as hiding the truth and sustaining an unfair situation (38). As a result, they may find fertile grounds on social media platforms promulgating a sense of unfairness, subsequently feeding antisystem sentiments. Neither conspiracy theories nor the exaggerated visibility of the successful nor the overexposure of societal problems are new phenomena. However, social media may have boosted societal arousal and sentiment, potentially stimulating an antisystem backlash, including its perceived emphasis on rationality and institutions.

Importantly, the trend reversal we find has its origins decades before the rise of social media, suggesting that while social media may have been an amplifier other factors must have driven the stagnation of the long-term rise of rationality around 1975 to 1980 and triggered its reversal. Perhaps a feeling that the world is run in an unfair way started to emerge in the late 1970s when results of neoliberal policies became clear (23⇓–25) and became amplified with the rise of the internet and especially social media. A central role of discontent would be consistent with the rise in language characteristic of so-called cognitive distortions (39) known in psychology as overly negative attitudes toward oneself, the world, and the future (40⇓⇓–43). If disillusion with “the system” is indeed the core driver, a loss of interest in the rationality that helped build and defend the system could perhaps be collateral damage.

Outlook

It seems unlikely that we will ever be able to accurately quantify the role of different mechanisms driving language change. However, the universal and robust shift that we observe does suggest a historical rearrangement of the balance between collectivism and individualism and—inextricably linked—between the rational and the emotional or framed otherwise. As the market for books, the content of the New York Times, and Google search queries must somehow reflect interest of the public, it seems plausible that the change we find is indeed linked to a change in interest, but does this indeed correspond to a profound change in attitudes and thinking? Clearly, the surge of post-truth discourse does suggest such a shift (44⇓⇓⇓–48), and our results are consistent with the interpretation that the post-truth phenomenon is linked to a historical seesaw in the balance between our two fundamental modes of thinking. If true, it may well be impossible to reverse the sea change we signal. Instead, societies may need to find a new balance, explicitly recognizing the importance of intuition and emotion, while at the same time making best use of the much needed power of rationality and science to deal with topics in their full complexity. Striking this balance right is urgent as rational, fact-based approaches may well be essential for maintaining functional democracies and addressing global challenges such as global warming, poverty, and the loss of nature.

Fig. 3. Ratio of intuition to rationality related words in the New York Times (A) and various book corpora represented in the Google n-gram database (B–E). The graphs depict the ratio of the mean relative frequencies of the sets of rationality-related and intuition-related flag words presented in Fig. 1, right-hand columns.