Peter Sheridan Dodds, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1411678112 – Human language reveals a universal positivity bias

“Using human evaluation of 100,000 words spread across 24 corpora in 10 languages diverse in origin and culture, we present evidence of a deep imprint of human sociality in language, observing that (i) the words of natural human language possess a universal positivity bias, (ii) the estimated emotional content of words is consistent between languages under translation, and (iii) this positivity bias is strongly independent of frequency of word use. Alongside these general regularities, we describe interlanguage variations in the emotional spectrum of languages that allow us to rank corpora. We also show how our word evaluations can be used to construct physical-like instruments for both real-time and offline measurement of the emotional content of large-scale texts positivity. Human language, our great social technology, reflects that which it describes through the stories it allows to be told and us, the tellers of those stories. Although language’s shaping effect on thinking has long been controversial, we know that a rich array of metaphor encodes our conceptualizations (4), word choice reflects our internal motives and immediate social roles and the way a language represents the present and future may condition economic choices. In 1969, Boucher and Osgood framed the Pollyanna hypothesis: a hypothetical, universal positivity bias in human communication. From a selection of small-scale, cross-cultural studies, they marshaled evidence that positive words are likely more prevalent, more meaningful, more diversely used, and more readily learned. However, in being far from an exhaustive, data-driven analysis of language, which is the approach we take here, their findings could only be regarded as suggestive. Indeed, studies of the positivity of isolated words and word stems have produced conflicting results, some pointing toward a positivity bias and others toward the opposite, although attempts to adjust for use frequency tend to recover a positivity signal.”