Positive language is on the decline in the United States

[FarCenter]

“The finding itself is interesting because people have used Language Positivity Bias as an indirect measure of happiness in society,” Dehghani said. “Further, there are various social psychology research findings that show that the mere exposure to positive words or negative words can change your mood. Also, depending on our mood, we tend to use more positive or negative words. So very generally, this is an indicator that happiness may be on the decline in the U.S.”

To see if external factors might have an impact on the fluctuations, the researchers also compared their findings with objective circumstances including casualties of war, economic well-being via Okun’s Misery Index, which measures unemployment and inflation rates, and subjective happiness indicators.

They found that LPB changes could be predicted in the objective environment and by changes in national subjective happiness and misery.

“Given that the measure of language positivity bias correlates strongly with subjective measures of happiness, the Misery Index — which is a measure of economic wellbeing — and also with the number of casualties in wars provides further evidence that the ratio we’ve captured between the use of positive words and negative words is showing something meaningful about the psychological states of society as a whole during the past 200 years,” Dehghani said.

https://dornsife.usc.edu/news/stories/2459/positive-language-is-on-the-decline-in-the-united-states/

[BeyondGeography]

1. For the past 200 years?

Thanks, Obama.

[AngryAmish]

2. "mere exposure to positive words or negative words can change your mood. ".

This is not true. This is magical thinking.

No wonder social psychiatry is a laughingstock.

[LanternWaste]

3. I especially enjoyed the manner in which you validated your premise

I especially enjoyed the manner in which you validated your premise with valid and objective evidence, indicating you yourself do not subscribe to "magical thinking." Had you not offered us as such, I'd see yours as simply another in a laundry list of petulant allegations.

[AngryAmish]

4. If you are not familiar with the replication crisis in social psychology make yourself familiar.

The field is a farce.