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.

What about our Political Leaders’ Rhetoric?

“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].

CONCLUDING DISCUSSION

Lucas CzarneckiUniversity of CalgaryDept. of Political Science

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].

Individual and Collective Identities in Context