Historical analysis of national subjective wellbeing using millions of digitized books

In addition to improving quality of life, higher subjective wellbeing leads to fewer health problems and higher productivity, making subjective wellbeing a focal issue among researchers and governments. However, it is difficult to estimate how happy people were during previous centuries. Here we sho...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature human behaviour 2019-12, Vol.3 (12), p.1271-1275
Main Authors: Hills, Thomas T., Proto, Eugenio, Sgroi, Daniel, Seresinhe, Chanuki Illushka
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
4014/159
4014/477
Behavioral Sciences
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Digitization
Economic history
Experimental Psychology
GDP
Germany
Gross Domestic Product
Happiness
Health problems
Historical analysis
History, 19th Century
History, 20th Century
History, 21st Century
Humans
Italy
Language
Life Sciences
Literature
Longevity
Meaning
Mental Health - history
Mental Health - trends
Microeconomics
Neurosciences
Personal Satisfaction
Personality and Social Psychology
Productivity
Psychology
Quality of Life
Quantitative analysis
Robustness
Sentiment analysis
United Kingdom
United States
Well being
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Summary:In addition to improving quality of life, higher subjective wellbeing leads to fewer health problems and higher productivity, making subjective wellbeing a focal issue among researchers and governments. However, it is difficult to estimate how happy people were during previous centuries. Here we show that a method based on the quantitative analysis of natural language published over the past 200 years captures reliable patterns in historical subjective wellbeing. Using sentiment analysis on the basis of psychological valence norms, we compute a national valence index for the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany and Italy, indicating relative happiness in response to national and international wars and in comparison to historical trends in longevity and gross domestic product. We validate our method using Eurobarometer survey data from the 1970s and demonstrate robustness using words with stable historical meanings, diverse corpora (newspapers, magazines and books) and additional word norms. By providing a window on quantitative historical psychology, this approach could inform policy and economic history. Using billions of words of digitized historical text, Hills et al. develop and validate a measure of national subjective wellbeing, the National Valence Index, going back 200 years.
ISSN:2397-3374
2397-3374
DOI:10.1038/s41562-019-0750-z