‘We conclude’ or ‘I believe’? Rationality declined decades ago
The use of rationality related words has been on the rise since 1850, but started an accelerating decline around 1980. This is concluded by research published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week. The discovery implies that a loss of interest in facts and rational arguments already started decades before the rise of social media.
Scientists from Wageningen University and Research (WUR) and Indiana University discovered that the increasing irrelevance of factual truth in public discourse is part of a groundswell trend that started decades ago. While the current ‘post-truth era’ has taken many by surprise, the study shows that over the past forty years public interest has undergone an accelerating shift from the collective to the individual, and from rationality towards emotion.
From ratio to sentiment
Analysing language from millions of books the researchers found that words associated to reasoning such as ‘determine’ and ‘conclusion’ rose systematically since 1850, while words related to human experience such as ‘feel’ and ‘believe’ declined. This pattern reversed over the past 40 years paralleled by a shift from a collectivistic to an individualistic focus as reflected by the ratio of singular to plural pronouns such as ‘I’/‘we’.
“Interpreting this synchronous sea-change in book language remains challenging.” says co-author Johan Bollen of Indiana University. “However, as we show, the nature of this reversal occurs in fiction as well as non-fiction. Moreover, we observe the same pattern of change between sentiment and rationality flag words in New York Times articles, suggesting that it is not an artefact of the book corpora we analysed.”
Causes
“Inferring the drivers of long-term patterns seen from 1850 until 1980 necessarily remains speculative.” Says lead author Marten Scheffer of WUR. “One possibility when it comes to the trends from 1850 to 1980 is that the rapid developments in science and technology and their socio-economic 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.”
What precisely caused the observed reversal of the long-term trend around 1980 remains perhaps even more difficult to pinpoint. However, according to the authors there could be a connection to tensions arising from changes in economic policies since the early 1980s, which may have been defended on rational arguments but the benefits of which were not equally distributed.
Social media
The authors did find that the shift from rationality to sentiment in book language accelerated around 2007 with the rise of social media, 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.
Co-author Ingrid van de Leemput from WUR: “Whatever the drivers, our results suggest that the post-truth phenomenon is linked to a historical seesaw in the balance between our two fundamental modes of thinking: reasoning versus intuition. 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.”
Original Article: ‘We conclude’ or ‘I believe’? Rationality declined decades ago
More from: Wageningen University and Research | Indiana University
The Latest Updates from Bing News & Google News
Go deeper with Bing News on:
Decline of rationality
- UnUsUaL (Catalist:1D1) investors are sitting on a loss of 43% if they invested five years ago
The main aim of stock picking is to find the market-beating stocks. But every investor is virtually certain to ...
- A sharp drop in state health coverage for low-income kids
On Thursday, researchers at the Center for Children and Families at Georgetown University released a state-by-state assessment of how the redetermination process had unfolded across the nation. It ...
- The Central Role of the Study of Tragedy
To better prepare undergraduates for life’s complexities, place tragedy front and center in humanities classes.
- Donald Trump and the Relative Decline of US Power in Asia
Deep shifts in the status of the United States as Asia’s hegemon have been evident since the end of the Cold War. Over the succeeding three decades, Asia has witnessed a relative decline in American ...
- EQS-News: RATIONAL AG starts fiscal year 2024 with a successful first quarter
RATIONAL AG starts fiscal year 2024 with a successful first ... growth during the period from 2021 until the first quarter of 2023 as the main reason for the decline. However, the long-term growth ...
Go deeper with Google Headlines on:
Decline of rationality
[google_news title=”” keyword=”decline of rationality” num_posts=”5″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]
Go deeper with Bing News on:
Post-truth era
- Brian Kelley leaves Florida Georgia Line behind, finds 'Tennessee Truth' with new album
His sophomore solo album, "Tennessee Truth," arrives on Friday and hearkens his arrival ... hits that often felt snatched from the catalog of Atlanta's 1990s and 2000s era of hip-hop and R&B's ...
- How Trump’s allies amplify his Truth Social messages to the wider world
(Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post) Truth Social was estimated to have 5.4 million website ... Through much of 2020, the Catturd account had featured pandemic-era jabs at Democrats, often with a ...
- Truth Social platform was not shut down. No truth to that viral claim | Fact check
A spokesperson for Trump Media, the platform's parent company, said the claim is false. As of May 7, Truth Social was operating normally.
- Trump removes Truth Social post complaining about next hush money trial witness
Former President Trump appeared to delete a social media post Tuesday morning complaining that his legal team did not have adequate time to prepare for the next witness in the hush money criminal ...
- Gagged Trump quickly deletes Truth Social post panicking over “unprecedented” witness
In a written order handed down at the start of Tuesday’s court proceedings, Judge Juan Merchan announced fines of $1,000 each for nine posts made on Trump’s Truth Social feed that he said violated his ...
Go deeper with Google Headlines on:
Post-truth era
[google_news title=”” keyword=”post-truth era” num_posts=”5″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]