A decline in prosocial language helps explain public disapproval of the US Congress.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Frimer JA
PROVIDER: S-EPMC4450383 | biostudies-literature | 2015 May
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Publications
A decline in prosocial language helps explain public disapproval of the US Congress.
Frimer Jeremy A JA Aquino Karl K Gebauer Jochen E JE Zhu Luke Lei LL Oakes Harrison H
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20150511 21
Talking about helping others makes a person seem warm and leads to social approval. This work examines the real world consequences of this basic, social-cognitive phenomenon by examining whether record-low levels of public approval of the US Congress may, in part, be a product of declining use of prosocial language during Congressional debates. A text analysis of all 124 million words spoken in the House of Representatives between 1996 and 2014 found that declining levels of prosocial language s ...[more]
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