Special Places and Times
The rise and fall of rationality in language
Marten Scheffer et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 21 December 2021
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.
Demand for vaccination in Sub-Saharan Africa: The vertical legacy of the slave trade
Laure Athias & Moudo Macina
Social Science & Medicine, forthcoming
Abstract:
We combine historical data on the slave trade by ethnic group with individual-level data geolocated at the cluster level from the 2010–2014 Demographic and Health Surveys to examine the relationship between ancestors' exposure to the slave trade and children vaccination status against measles. Exploiting within-location variation, and hence isolating the vertical cultural transmission channel of the slave trade, we find that children from mothers whose ancestors were exposed to the slave trade are less likely to be vaccinated than children living in the same location but with mothers from a slave-free ethnic group. The effect is larger than that of standard determinants of health demand, such as education or revenue. Exploiting other health behaviors, we point to mistrust as the channel through which the slave trade affects current demand for vaccination. We find evidence of increased adverse effect of slave trade exposure on contemporaneous demand for vaccination among the descendants whose family has a higher preference for traditional practices and higher incentives to transmit their inherited cultural traits. While we know that there is not a uniform health policy code deemed appropriate for all geographical areas, our results suggest that there is space to integrate ethnic groups’ historical-specificity in health policy design and communication.
The Contribution of the Arts and Creative Economy to Social Capital: Evidence from the COVID-19 Pandemic
Christos Makridis & Shoshanah Goldberg-Miller
Stanford Working Paper, November 2021
Abstract:
While there is a large literature about the importance of social capital and its impact on economic and social flourishing, much less is known about the relevance of the arts and creative communities as inputs to social capital. Using cross-sectional variation in the exposure of different counties to the arts and creative communities prior to the pandemic, we quantify how their employment declines are associated with social capital. We find that a 1 percentage point decline in arts employment growth between February and May 2020 is associated with a 0.16 standard deviation decline in social capital. We find even stronger effects when we focus on the creative economy at large, concentrated in the association with collective efficacy and shared norms within a community. Our estimates are robust to the inclusion of median household income, overall county employment growth, and state fixed effects. These results suggest that there is an open window for state and local policy interventions that promote economic development and social capital through the arts and creative communities.
And they all lived unhappily ever after: Positive and negative emotions in American and Russian picture books
Yulia Chentsova-Dutton et al.
Emotion, forthcoming
Abstract:
The U.S. and Russian cultural contexts are thought to foster different models of emotion, with the former emphasizing positive emotions more and negative emotions less than the latter. Little is known about the ways in which parents transmit these models of emotions to children. Cultural products, such as popular storybooks, may serve to provide important tools of transmission. Two studies examined similarities and differences in the extent to which children’s books from these cultural contexts depict emotions. In Study 1, U.S., Russian American, and Russian parents described the extent to which books that they recently read to their children depict positive and negative emotions. Although no differences emerged for depictions of positive emotions, U.S. parents described reading books with lower levels of negative emotions than Russian parents, with Russian American parents in between. These differences were partially due to parental beliefs about sadness. In Study 2, verbal and nonverbal depictions of emotions were compared for sets of popular children’s books from the U.S. and Russia. U.S. books verbally referenced anger and sadness and depicted happiness, anger, and fear faces less frequently than Russian books. Taken together, these studies suggest that American and Russian parents value and expose their children to different depictions of emotions, particularly negative emotions. Future studies need to examine the ways in which children in these cultural contexts interpret depictions of emotions.
The prevailing trend of consanguinity in the Arab society of Israel: Is it still a challenge?
Rajech Sharkia et al.
Journal of Biosocial Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
The aim of this study was to determine the trend of consanguineous marriage among the Arab population in Israel. Socio-demographic data for the Arab population were extracted from national health surveys conducted in Israel in 2007 and 2017. The prevalence of consanguineous marriage among the Arab population in Israel increased significantly from 36.3% to 41.6% in the decade from 2007 to 2017. First-cousin and closer marriages constituted about 50% of total consanguineous marriages in the two periods surveyed. Consanguinity was found to be significantly related to religion and place of residence. Thus, the prevalence of consanguineous marriage remains high among the Arab population in Israel, similar to other Arab societies. These findings affect the health of future generations and impose a challenge for health care professionals.
Gender Gaps in Deceptive Self-Presentation on Social-Media Platforms Vary With Gender Equality: A Multinational Investigation
Dasha Kolesnyk, Martijn de Jong & Rik Pieters
Psychological Science, December 2021, Pages 1952-1964
Abstract:
Deceptive self-presentation on social-media platforms appears to be common. However, its prevalence and determinants are still largely unknown, partly because admitting such behavior is socially sensitive and hard to study. We investigated deceptive self-presentation from the perspective of mating theories in two key domains: physical attractiveness and personal achievement. A truth-telling technique was used to measure deceptive self-presentation in a survey of 12,257 adults (51% female) across 25 countries. As hypothesized, men and women reported more deceptive self-presentation in the domain traditionally most relevant for their gender in a mating context. However, contrary to lay beliefs (N = 790), results showed larger gender differences in deceptive self-presentation in countries with higher gender equality because there is less gender-atypical (relative to gender-typical) deceptive self-presentation in these countries. Higher gender equality was also associated with less deceptive self-presentation for men and women worldwide.
Self-referential processing accounts for cultural variation in self-enhancement versus criticism: An electrocortical investigation
Cristina Salvador et al.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, forthcoming
Abstract:
European Americans are self-enhancing, whereas East Asians are sometimes self-critical. However, the mechanisms underlying this cultural difference remain unclear. Here, we addressed this gap by testing 32 Taiwanese and 32 American young adults, who indicated whether their self-esteem would change in various episodes involving success or failure. We monitored their electroencephalogram (EEG) and assessed upper-alpha band power in response to the outcome information. An increase in upper-alpha power indicates internally directed attention; therefore, it is an index of self-referential processing when assessed during a judgment about the self. As predicted, Americans judged that their self-esteem (but not another’s) would increase more after a success than it would decrease after a failure, thereby showing the previously observed self-enhancing pattern. Taiwanese tended to show the opposite pattern, self-criticism. Notably, Americans, but not Taiwanese, showed an increase in upper-alpha band power in response to the self’s successes (vs. failures). This bias in the EEG index of self-referential processing predicted the cultural difference in self-enhancement (vs. criticism). The role of self-referential processing in self-enhancement is discussed.
The bouba/kiki effect is robust across cultures and writing systems
Aleksandra Cwiek et al.
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, forthcoming
Abstract:
The bouba/kiki effect — the association of the nonce word bouba with a round shape and kiki with a spiky shape — is a type of correspondence between speech sounds and visual properties with potentially deep implications for the evolution of spoken language. However, there is debate over the robustness of the effect across cultures and the influence of orthography. We report an online experiment that tested the bouba/kiki effect across speakers of 25 languages representing nine language families and 10 writing systems. Overall, we found strong evidence for the effect across languages, with bouba eliciting more congruent responses than kiki. Participants who spoke languages with Roman scripts were only marginally more likely to show the effect, and analysis of the orthographic shape of the words in different scripts showed that the effect was no stronger for scripts that use rounder forms for bouba and spikier forms for kiki. These results confirm that the bouba/kiki phenomenon is rooted in crossmodal correspondence between aspects of the voice and visual shape, largely independent of orthography. They provide the strongest demonstration to date that the bouba/kiki effect is robust across cultures and writing systems.