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TELLTALE SIGNS OF CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM IN LANGUAGE:
Approach-Avoidance Emotions and Rhetoric
Lucas CzarneckiUniversity of CalgaryDept. of Political Science
“LANGUAGE IS A WINDOW INTO THE MIND” - S. PINKER
Lucas CzarneckiUniversity of CalgaryDept. of Political Science
The Canadian Context Left
Right
Center
(Photo Credit: Office of the Prime Minister, via Twitter)
www.canadianelectionsdatabase.ca(shameless self-promotion, full database launches July 1st 2017 )
Understanding the Left/Right Divide
See: Cochrane, C. (2015). Left and Right: the small world of political ideas. McGill: University PressAnd: Jost, J.T. (2006). “The End of the End of Ideology”, American Psychologist, 61(7), 651-670.
(Photo Credit: Koren Shadmi)
The Classical (or
Essentialist) View
The Alternative
View
Shifting away…Old Paradigms
Laponce (1981)It’s…Religiosity vs Secularism…
Bobbio (1996) & Inglehart (1990) Nope… extent of egalitarianism
Noel & Therien (2008)Nope… definition of egalitarianism
Mervis & Rosch (1981)Rejects “conceptual utopia”
Dif. are gradual & incremental
Alford (2015), Oskarsson et al. (2015) Jost & Amodio (2012)Inheritance/Predisposition?
Cohen (2003), Haidt (2001), Danziger et al. (2010)Humans are not so rational!
Where do ideologies & partisan loyalties come from? … …
*One* explanation: Approach-Avoidance Emotions
This is… Anxiety (avoidance-based) Overestimates risk Status-quo oriented (risk-avoidance choices) Risk reduction (concerned with uncertainty)
This is… Anger (approach-based) Underestimates risk Change oriented (risk-seeking choices) Moral anger (addresses injustices “no dessert!”)
See: Marcus, G.E. (2003). The Psychology of Emotion and Politics. In Sears, D.O., Huddy, L., & Jervis, R. (Eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology. (pp. 183-207).See also: Lerner J.S., and Keltner, D. (2001). “Fear, Anger, Risk”. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 81(1), 146-159.
LiberalsPersonality (Big 5):
Openness to New Experiences
Conservatives
Personality (Big 5):ContentiousnessNeuroticism
Predisposition != Determinism
DO IDEOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES MANIFEST IN LANGUAGE?
H: Freq. of Approach-Avoidance emotions words will depend on a group’s ideology
H(i): Higher Freq./Volume of Anger Words - leftH(ii): Higher Freq./Volume of Anxiety Words – rightH(iii): Similar patterns for other correlates – e.g. happiness
Data Collection
The Canadian 2015 General Election Campaign
Strengths & Limitations
Dates (78-day Campaign)4/Aug/2015 until 19/Oct/2015
Leader Posts N= 1,712 Harper = 525 | Trudeau = 531 | Mulcair = 656
Comments N = 297, 830 Con = 150,529 | lib = 97,041 | ndp = 50,260
Pros: External Validity (not perfect)Sample Size
Cons: Controlling variables (e.g. age, sex, education, etc.)Data Independence
Barbera, P. (2016). Rfacebook (version 0.63) Data Scraped/Preprocessed
Analysis
Pennebaker et al. LIWC2015 (version 2.1.0).Statistical Analyses in SPSS
Psych.Processes
Examples of Dictionary Words
Words in Category
InternalConsistency(Corrected α )
Psych. Affect happy, cried 1393 .57
Pos. Emotions love, nice, sweet 620 .64
Neg. Emotions hurt, ugly, nasty 744 .55
Anxiety worried, fearful 116 .73
Anger hate, kill, annoyed 230 .53
Sadness crying, grief, sad 136 .70
Center-Left
Center Right
anxiety
angersadness
0
0.5
1
Conservative Liberal NDP
Con: p<.000***Lib: p<.270NDP: p<.000***
Con: p<..001***Lib: p<.050*NDP: p<.246
Con: p<.336Lib: p<.014*NDP: p<.065
Dimensions of Negative Affect by Party SupportLeft
Right
Center
Frequency of Anger-related words from Facebook Commentators during the 2015 Canadian General Election Campaign
See: Lerner J.S., and Keltner, D. (2001). “Fear, Anger, Risk”. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 81(1), 146-159.
Frequency of Anxiety-related Words from Facebook Commentators during the 2015 Canadian General Election Campaign
See: Sylwester, K. and Matthew Purver. (2015). “Twitter Language Use Reflects Psychological Differences between Democrats and Republicans”. PLoS ONE, 10(9), 1-18.
Frequency of Positive Emotion Words from Facebook Commentators during the 2015 Canadian General Election Campaign
See: Schlenker, B.R., Chambers, J.R., and Le, B.M. (2012). “Conservatives are happier than liberals, but why? Political ideology, personality, and life satisfaction”. Journal of Research in Personality. 46, 127-146.
“If I can only hold your attention for a few minutes, and I can either tell you how I helped an old lady cross the street
or how my opponent kicked a cat, it makes more sense for me to tell you about the cat.”
- Jon Krosnick
“…The wrong decisions on taxes, spending, and deficits will expose Canada to the very real global economic instability that surrounds us.
They will negatively impact our economy and jobs from coast to coast to coast.
We have to make sure that doesn’t happen…”
- Stephen Harper
“The status quo isn't working. Our plan will make a positive difference in people's lives”
- Justin Trudeau
Political Rhetoric During a Campaign
Party Leader
Affiliation Achieve Power Reward Risk
HarperN = 525
6.99 3.12 4.92 2.03 1.57
TrudeauN = 531
5.84 3.88 4.41 1.88 0.72
MulcairN = 656
4.36 3.46 4.38 1.68 0.57
Mean Frequency of Word Categories relating to ‘Psychological Drives’ for Canadian Party Leaders. Cell values are percentages calculated as (raw count of word category / total words). N are the number of Facebook posts.
Future ResearchLatent Semantic Analysis (LSA)
Procedures:1. Create text matrix (m x n) 2. Cell transformations
• Raw count is weighed (local vs. global freq)
3. Singular Value Decomposition
Logic of Word Association: IF X does not co-occur with Z, BUT co-occurs with Y, which co-occurs w/ Z,THEN X is associated with Z (assoc. depends on strength of XY, YZ pairs, & associations w/ all other potential word pairs)
Word /doc
1 … … 6,000
1 x x x x
… x x x x
… x x x x
45,000 x x x x
See: Landauer, T.K. & Dumais, S.T. (1997). “A Solution to Plato’s Problem: The Latent Semantic Anaysis Theory of Acquisition, Induction, and Representation of Knowledge.” Psychological Review, 104(2), 211-240.And: Wild, Fridolin. (2015). lsa: Latent Semantic Analysis (version 0.73.1) [Computer Software].
THANK YOU Books & Chapters
Cochrane, C. (2015). Left and Right: the small world of political ideas. McGill: University Press
Marcus, G.E. (2003). The Psychology of Emotion and Politics. In Sears, D.O., Huddy, L., & Jervis, R. (Eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology. (pp. 183-207).
Journal Articles
Grimmer, J. & Stewart, B.M. (2013).“Text as Data: The Promise and Pitfalls of Automatic Content Analysis Methods for Political Texts.” Political Analysis, 21, 267-297.
Landauer, T.K. & Dumais, S.T. (1997). “A Solution to Plato’s Problem: The Latent Semantic Anaysis Theory of Acquisition, Induction, and Representation of Knowledge.” Psychological Review, 104(2), 211-240.
Oskarsson, S., et al. (2015). “Linking Genes and Political Orientations: Testing the Cognitive Ability as Mediator Hypothesis”. Political Psychology, 36(6), 349-655.
Pennebaker, J.W., Mehl, M.R., & Niederhoffer, K.G. (2003). “Psychological Aspects of Natural Language Use: Our Words, Our Selves.” Annual Review of Psychology, 54, 547-577.
Piurko, Y., Schwartz, S.H., & Davidov, E. (2011). “Basic Personal Values and the Meaning of Left-Right Political Orientations in 20 Countries.” Political Psychology, 32(4), 537-561.
Software
Barbera, Pablo. (2016). Rfacebook: Access to Facebook API via R (version 0.63) [Computer Software].
Pennebaker, J.W., Booth, R.J., & Francis, M.E. (2016). Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count: LIWC2015 (version 2.1.0). Austin, TX: Pennebaker Conglomerates.
Wild, Fridolin. (2015). lsa: Latent Semantic Analysis (version 0.73.1) [Computer Software].