Title |
Books Average Previous Decade of Economic Misery
|
---|---|
Published in |
PLOS ONE, January 2014
|
DOI | 10.1371/journal.pone.0083147 |
Pubmed ID | |
Authors |
R. Alexander Bentley, Alberto Acerbi, Paul Ormerod, Vasileios Lampos |
Abstract |
For the 20(th) century since the Depression, we find a strong correlation between a 'literary misery index' derived from English language books and a moving average of the previous decade of the annual U.S. economic misery index, which is the sum of inflation and unemployment rates. We find a peak in the goodness of fit at 11 years for the moving average. The fit between the two misery indices holds when using different techniques to measure the literary misery index, and this fit is significantly better than other possible correlations with different emotion indices. To check the robustness of the results, we also analysed books written in German language and obtained very similar correlations with the German economic misery index. The results suggest that millions of books published every year average the authors' shared economic experiences over the past decade. |
X Demographics
Geographical breakdown
Country | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
United Kingdom | 15 | 19% |
United States | 14 | 18% |
Spain | 4 | 5% |
Netherlands | 4 | 5% |
Germany | 2 | 3% |
Italy | 2 | 3% |
Rwanda | 1 | 1% |
Austria | 1 | 1% |
Mexico | 1 | 1% |
Other | 4 | 5% |
Unknown | 32 | 40% |
Demographic breakdown
Type | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Members of the public | 60 | 75% |
Scientists | 13 | 16% |
Science communicators (journalists, bloggers, editors) | 5 | 6% |
Practitioners (doctors, other healthcare professionals) | 2 | 3% |
Mendeley readers
Geographical breakdown
Country | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Nigeria | 6 | 10% |
United Kingdom | 4 | 7% |
Germany | 1 | 2% |
Japan | 1 | 2% |
United States | 1 | 2% |
Luxembourg | 1 | 2% |
Unknown | 45 | 76% |
Demographic breakdown
Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Student > Ph. D. Student | 14 | 24% |
Researcher | 12 | 20% |
Student > Master | 9 | 15% |
Student > Bachelor | 7 | 12% |
Other | 5 | 8% |
Other | 10 | 17% |
Unknown | 2 | 3% |
Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Social Sciences | 14 | 24% |
Arts and Humanities | 7 | 12% |
Psychology | 5 | 8% |
Computer Science | 5 | 8% |
Linguistics | 4 | 7% |
Other | 18 | 31% |
Unknown | 6 | 10% |