Tone in politics is not systematically related to macro trends, ideology, or experience

What explains the variation in tone in politics? Different literatures argue that changes in the tone of politicians reflect changes in the economy, general language, well-being, or ideology. So far, these claims have been empirically tested only in isolation, in single country studies, or with a sm...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Scientific reports 2024-02, Vol.14 (1), p.3241-3241, Article 3241
Main Authors: Pipal, Christian, Bakker, Bert N., Schumacher, Gijs, van der Velden, Mariken A. C. G.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
631/477/2811
692/699/476/1300
Arousal
Communication
Emotions
Humanities and Social Sciences
Ideology
Language
multidisciplinary
Niacinamide
Opposition parties
Parliaments
Personality
Political science
Politicians
Politics
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Society
Speech
Speeches
Trends
Voters
Well being
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Summary:What explains the variation in tone in politics? Different literatures argue that changes in the tone of politicians reflect changes in the economy, general language, well-being, or ideology. So far, these claims have been empirically tested only in isolation, in single country studies, or with a small subset of indicators. We offer an overarching view by modelling the use of tone in European national parliaments in 7 countries across 30 years. Using a semi-supervised sentiment-topic model to measure polarity and arousal in legislative debates, we show in a preregistered multiverse analysis that the tone in legislative debates is not systematically related to previously claimed factors. We also replicate the absence of such systematic relationships using national leader speeches and parties’ election manifestos. There is also no universal trend towards more negativity or emotionality in political language. Overall, our results highlight the importance of multi-lingual and cross-country multiverse analyses for generalizing findings on emotions in politics.
ISSN:2045-2322
2045-2322
DOI:10.1038/s41598-023-49618-9