| Title |
The Expression of Emotions in 20th Century Books
|
|---|---|
| Published in |
PLOS ONE, March 2013
|
| DOI | 10.1371/journal.pone.0059030 |
| Pubmed ID | |
| Authors |
Alberto Acerbi, Vasileios Lampos, Philip Garnett, R. Alexander Bentley |
| Abstract |
We report here trends in the usage of "mood" words, that is, words carrying emotional content, in 20th century English language books, using the data set provided by Google that includes word frequencies in roughly 4% of all books published up to the year 2008. We find evidence for distinct historical periods of positive and negative moods, underlain by a general decrease in the use of emotion-related words through time. Finally, we show that, in books, American English has become decidedly more "emotional" than British English in the last half-century, as a part of a more general increase of the stylistic divergence between the two variants of English language. |
X Demographics
The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 241 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| United States | 58 | 24% |
| United Kingdom | 37 | 15% |
| Italy | 9 | 4% |
| Netherlands | 8 | 3% |
| Spain | 7 | 3% |
| Australia | 6 | 2% |
| Canada | 6 | 2% |
| Germany | 5 | 2% |
| Argentina | 3 | 1% |
| Other | 35 | 15% |
| Unknown | 67 | 28% |
Demographic breakdown
| Type | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Members of the public | 182 | 76% |
| Scientists | 41 | 17% |
| Science communicators (journalists, bloggers, editors) | 14 | 6% |
| Practitioners (doctors, other healthcare professionals) | 4 | 2% |
Mendeley readers
The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 310 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Nigeria | 38 | 12% |
| United States | 8 | 3% |
| United Kingdom | 6 | 2% |
| Germany | 5 | 2% |
| France | 4 | 1% |
| Netherlands | 3 | <1% |
| Italy | 2 | <1% |
| Brazil | 2 | <1% |
| Tanzania, United Republic of | 1 | <1% |
| Other | 12 | 4% |
| Unknown | 229 | 74% |
Demographic breakdown
| Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Student > Bachelor | 78 | 25% |
| Student > Ph. D. Student | 51 | 16% |
| Researcher | 40 | 13% |
| Student > Master | 30 | 10% |
| Other | 21 | 7% |
| Other | 67 | 22% |
| Unknown | 23 | 7% |
| Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Arts and Humanities | 78 | 25% |
| Computer Science | 43 | 14% |
| Social Sciences | 39 | 13% |
| Psychology | 27 | 9% |
| Agricultural and Biological Sciences | 22 | 7% |
| Other | 76 | 25% |
| Unknown | 25 | 8% |