Political Psycholinguistics: A Comprehensive Analysis of the Language Habits of Liberal and Conservative Social Media Users
Political Psycholinguistics: A Comprehensive Analysis of the Language Habits of Liberal and Conservative Social Media Users
复制标题
DOI：
10.1037/pspp0000275
复制
发表时间：
2020-04-01
影响因子：
7.6
通讯作者：
Bonneau, Richard
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Sterling, Joanna;Jost, John T.;Bonneau, Richard
近一个世纪以来，社会科学家一直试图理解左右意识形态在价值观、动机和思维方式方面的差异。已经取得了很大进展，但与其他研究领域一样，这项工作因依赖小且统计上不具代表性的样本以及使用缺乏生态有效性的反应性自我报告措施而受到批评。为了克服这些限制，我们采用自动文本分析方法来调查近 25,000 名 Twitter 用户自发、自然地使用语言的情况。我们从政治心理学文献中得出 27 个假设，并使用 32 本词典对其进行了测试。在 23 个案例中，我们观察到自由派和保守派的语言风格存在显着差异。例如，自由主义者更多地使用表达仁慈的语言，而保守派则更多地使用与威胁、权力、传统、变革阻力、确定性、安全、愤怒、焦虑和一般负面情绪有关的语言。 17例中，思想极端也有显着影响。例如，温和派使用更多仁慈的语言，而极端主义者使用更多与抑制、试探、归属、抵制改变、确定性、安全感、愤怒、焦虑、负面情绪、脏话和与死亡相关的语言有关的语言。这些易于调整的研究方法为在心理语言学和政治心理学领域进行大样本、多样化的低调研究开辟了前所未有的新机会。
For nearly a century social scientists have sought to understand left-right ideological differences in values, motives, and thinking styles. Much progress has been made, but-as in other areas of research-this work has been criticized for relying on small and statistically unrepresentative samples and the use of reactive, self-report measures that lack ecological validity. In an effort to overcome these limitations, we employed automated text analytic methods to investigate the spontaneous, naturally occurring use of language in nearly 25,000 Twitter users. We derived 27 hypotheses from the literature on political psychology and tested them using 32 individual dictionaries. In 23 cases, we observed significant differences in the linguistic styles of liberals and conservatives. For instance, liberals used more language that conveyed benevolence, whereas conservatives used more language pertaining to threat, power, tradition, resistance to change, certainty, security, anger, anxiety, and negative emotion in general. In 17 cases, there were also significant effects of ideological extremity. For instance, moderates used more benevolent language, whereas extremists used more language pertaining to inhibition, tentativeness, affiliation, resistance to change, certainty, security, anger, anxiety, negative affect, swear words, and death-related language. These research methods, which are easily adaptable, open up new and unprecedented opportunities for conducting unobtrusive research in psycholinguistics and political psychology with large and diverse samples.