What can we say – the political environment is pretty wild at the moment, and it does seem like we are hearing more about politician’s personal opinions, rather than facts, these days. But is this really a change from the past? Is the rise in “alternative facts” being spouted by high-profile individuals any more prevalent now than it was years ago, or is this just a perception issue?
Well, a study has examined over 8 million political speeches made in Congress over a period of 140 years and determined that yes, we are living in unprecedented times: never before have members of the US Congress based their views and rhetoric more strongly on personal convictions and less on facts.
Interestingly, the team noticed a significant decrease in the use of evidence-based political rhetoric since the 1970s, with the present representing the lowest point. During the same period, the team also observed a decline in legislative productivity, an increase in political polarization across the party divide, and growing economic inequality in the US.
The researchers, led by David Garcia, a professor of social and behavioral data science at the University of Konstanz, were located in the UK, Israel, Australia, and Germany. Together, they examined the political rhetoric used in congressional speeches during the years between 1879 and 2022, focusing on how politicians express their conceptions of truth in their language – essentially, are they more likely to use objective facts or gut instinct?
“In many democracies, there is currently much concern about ‘truth decay’: the blurring of the boundary between fact and fiction, not only fuelling polarization but also undermining public trust in institutions,” Garcia explained in a statement.
Contrary to what some may believe, a political biome consisting of only evidence-based discourse and “reasoned” debate is not necessarily ideal. Intuition and emotional subjective dimensions can also be valuable for exploring and resolving social issues.
“Productive democratic discourse balances evidence-based and intuition-based conceptions of truth,” Garcia added.
However, if facts are given less weight and the balance is off, it can seriously jeopardize political discourse. Unfortunately, this is exactly what’s going on in the US’s congressional speeches.
Between 1879 and the mid-20th century, both facts and arguments made on gut instinct were used in congressional speeches in relatively balanced and stable ways. After 1940, the balance tipped towards facts, which peaked in the mid-1970s. From 1976 to 2022, facts lost their traction, giving way to a significant rise in intuition statements, with the current period representing an all-time low for evidence-based discourse. This decline in facts is shared across US parties, although the decline has been most pronounced among Republicans since 2021.
These findings are not limited to congressional speeches either. The team found similar results for analysis of Twitter/X posts by members of Congress from 2011 to 2022 as well.
“One remarkable aspect of our results is the strong association between evidence-based language and performance,” Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, Chair in Cognitive Psychology at the University of Bristol, explained.
“The more speeches in Congress reflect a reliance on evidence and facts rather than intuition, the better the performance of Congress and the less polarization between parties. Conversely, the increasing reliance on intuition-based language since the 1970s has been associated with a decline in performance and increasing polarization. Clearly it matters how politicians use language in the legislature.”
In order to analyze 8 million speeches, the team had to rely on specific computational data analysis methods.
“We undertook a massive effort to track long-term trends in how the language of the US Congress has evolved, by analyzing Congressional records spanning nearly fifteen decades,” first author Segun Aroyehun explained.
“We used advanced text analysis to assess the meaning of words in speeches and compared them to the meaning of words in dictionaries capturing conceptions of truth. This allowed us to observe the focus of speeches over time.”
The team started by identifying distinct key words that were representative of evidence-based or intuition-based language. They eventually had 49 words for fact-based language – such as “analyze”, “data”, “findings”, and “investigation” – and 35 key words for intuition-based language – like “point of view”, “common sense”, “guess”, and “believe”.
They then calculated the ratios of the respective categories of key words used in the speeches. This resulted in a figure expressed as Evidence-Minus-Intuition, or EMI, which describes the relationship between evidence-based and intuition-based rhetoric. If there’s a positive EMI, it means there’s a higher proportion of facts being discussed, while a negative EMI indicates more personal opinions.
This method was actually developed for an earlier study by co-author Jana Lasser, Professor of Data Analysis at the University of Graz since 2024. In this earlier study, Lasser examined Twitter posts by members of Congress between 2011 and 2022 and found similar results to what this latest work has revealed.
“Even during this period, there was a change in the argumentation style,” Lasser said.
“Personal beliefs gradually gained in importance and were increasingly presented separately from scientific facts.”
The study is published in Nature Human Behaviour.
Source Link: Use Of Facts And Evidence-Based Rhetoric At All-Time Low In Congressional Speech
