Rising use of emotional language like 'feel' and 'believe' has displaced ...

Rising use of emotional language like 'feel' and 'believe' has displaced ...
Rising use of emotional language like 'feel' and 'believe' has displaced ...

A new study suggests we are living in the post-truth era where 'feelings trump facts,' as language has become less rational and more emotional over the past 40 years.

A team of scientists found words like 'determine' and 'conclusion' that were popular from 1850 through 1980 have been since been replaced with human experience such as 'feel' and 'believe.'

The team also identified another major shift around 2007 with the birth of social media, when the use of emotion-laden language surged and fact-related words dropped.

Although the drivers behind the shift cannot be determined, the researchers suggest it could be a rapid development in science and technology or tensions that came about from changes in economic polices in the early 1980s.

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A team of scientists found words like 'determine' and 'conclusion' that were popular from 1850 through 1980 have been since been replaced with human experience such as 'feel' and 'believe'

A team of scientists found words like 'determine' and 'conclusion' that were popular from 1850 through 1980 have been since been replaced with human experience such as 'feel' and 'believe'

The study was conducted by scientists from Wageningen University and Research (WUR) and Indiana University who analyzed used in millions of English- and Spanish-language books published between 1850 and 2019, analyzing the use of 5,000 frequently used words.

'To see if results might be specific to the corpora of book language we used, we analyzed how word use changed in the New York Times since 1850,' reads the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

'In addition, to probe whether changes in the frequency of words used in books does indeed reflect interest in the corresponding concepts we analyzed how change in Google word searches relates to the recent change in words used in books.'

Regarding emotional words, the team identified language relating to belief, spirituality, sapience, and intuition, such as 'imagine, compassion, forgiveness, heal.'

The team also identified another major shift around 2007 with the birth of social media, when the use of emotion-laden language surged and fact-related words dropped

The team also identified another major shift around 2007 with the birth of social media, when the use of emotion-laden

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