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Changes in Pronoun Use in American Books and the Rise of Individualism, 1960-2008
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Change over time in culture can appear among individuals and in cultural products such as song lyrics, television, and books. This analysis examines changes in pronoun use in the Google Books ngram database of 766,513 American books published 1960-2008. We hypothesize that pronoun use will reflect increasing individualism and decreasing collectivism in American culture. Consistent with this hypothesis, the use of first person plural pronouns (e.g., we, us) decreased 10% first person singular pronouns (I, me) increased 42%, and second person pronouns (you, your) quadrupled. These results complement previous research finding increases in individualistic traits among Americans.
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... First-person plural pronouns ("we" and derivatives) are associated with collectivist orientation, as they shift the focus of attention toward the group. Second-person pronouns ("you" and derivatives) are also linked to individualism, as they are meant to separate the subject from others [111]. ...
... A linguistic or text corpus is a systematically selected and annotated collection of [111]. They showed that the use of first-person singular and second-person pronouns increased by 42% and 300%, respectively, while the use of first-person plural pronouns decreased by 10%. ...
... The statistically significant change points also share many similarities with the pronoun usage data (Tables 3.12 Statistically significant change points in the usage of individualistic words Pronouns were taken from the publication [111], individualistic and collectivistic words from [110], and statistical analysis was conducted as described in section 2.2.3. ...
Three approaches were used to study the structure of the cultural syndrome
"individualism-collectivism" in Ukraine: the "spatial" structure (factor structure, age,
gender, regional characteristics, structure at the in-group level, connection with
individual religiosity) was studied using the Singelis et al. (1995) scale; the temporal
structure (dynamics of individualism-collectivism components over time, starting from 1900) was studied using content analysis and Schwartz’s value scale.
... A comprehensive First-Person Pronouns Use Index (FPP) was constructed by subtracting the mean score of singular pronouns from that of plural pronouns. The FPP index served as a validated proxy for group identification orientation, with higher scores indicating stronger collective identity and lower scores reflecting greater individualistic emphasis (Adam-Troian, Bonetto, and Arciszewski 2021; Hamamura and Xu 2015;Twenge, Campbell, and Gentile 2013;Uz 2014;Yu et al. 2016). Ma and Ye 2022;Pelham et al. 2018). ...
Using a computational social science approach integrating evolutionary psychology, social psychology, and intergroup relations, this research examined associations between disease threats and group identification across cultures by analyzing the relationship between COVID‐19 threats (actual and perceived) and first‐person plural versus singular pronoun usage—a linguistic marker of collective identity. Two studies analyzed epidemiological and Google Trends search data over 154 weeks: Study 1 established baseline patterns using U.S. data, while Study 2 investigated cross‐cultural variations globally. Through transfer function methodology to pre‐whiten time series data for cross‐correlation function analysis and random‐slope‐random‐intercept multilevel modeling, the research explored temporal dynamics of threat‐identification relationships. Results indicated that perceived COVID‐19 threat, measured through pandemic‐related search volumes, exhibited consistent correlations with increased first‐person plural pronoun usage across both studies. While COVID‐19 cases demonstrated non‐significant relationships globally but positive associations in the U.S., mortality rates showed negative correlations with first‐person plural pronoun usage globally, differing from U.S. patterns. Cultural collectivism emerged as a moderating factor in the global analysis, with individualistic cultures displaying stronger associations between perceived threat and collective linguistic markers. These findings contribute to our understanding of the relationship between collective threats and group identification processes across cultures while demonstrating the potential of computational linguistic analysis for monitoring real‐time collective responses to pandemics, offering insights relevant to preparedness strategies for future global challenges.
... Individualism correlates with an increased frequency of first-person singular pronouns and a decreased frequency of first-person plural pronouns. For instance, between 1960 and 2008, the frequency of I, me pronouns increased by 42 per cent, while the frequency of we, us pronouns decreased by 10 per cent in American English (Twenge, Campbell, and Gentile 2013). Some papers discuss similar studies for other GBN-supported languages (Yu et al. 2016;Uz 2014;Hamamura and Xu 2015). ...
This article briefly summarizes primary publications that use Google Books Ngram (GBN) to study societal change. GBN is the most extensive tagged diachronic corpus available. Trends in societal evolution can be studied using year-by-year word frequency statistics. The development of individualism, changes in emotions and happiness, social psychology, and some other topics are among those examined in this article as research areas that have attracted the most interest. This paper discusses the specific findings and the research methodology, particularly its limitations. There are some examples of how GBN can be used to test existing scientific theories. New, unexpected, and scientifically significant findings are possible with GBN that would not be possible with other approaches.
This article briefly overviews research on cultural change. This article consists of three sections. The first section explains the background of cultural changes. Various substantial changes, including modernization and globalization, have occurred. Due to these changes, cultures that have been historically and traditionally inherited are gradually changing. The second section overviews the methodology of research on cultural change. It is not easy to empirically examine cultural changes. I introduce three major approaches to overcome these difficulties: analyzing archival data, conducting cross-temporal meta-analyses, and analyzing cultural products. Finally, the third section outlines studies on changes in individualism as an example of cultural change. It has been shown that various cultures, including Japanese culture, have become more individualistic. In contrast, it has also been reported that, in some respects, cultures have not become more individualistic. Therefore, it is necessary to clarify the moderating factors and boundary conditions of this discrepancy.
The article assesses the dynamics of the frequency of early- and late-acquired words in Russian-language texts based on the materials of two corpora of newspaper texts (national media and regional and international media) and two subcorpora (fiction texts and non-fiction texts) of the main corpus of the Russian National Corpus in the late 20 th – early 21st century. It was expected, in particular, based on the results of the study of the dynamics of the frequency of concrete and abstract words in Russian-language newspaper texts during this period, that the frequency of late-acquired words would tend to decrease, while the frequency of concrete vocabulary would not change. The results did not confirm this hypothesis: no reliable evidence of directional changes in the frequency of these two groups of words in the Russian language in the late 20 th – early 21st century was revealed. A possible reason for these results may be the heterogeneity of the corpora examined. In order to exclude the influence of this heterogeneity, the dynamics of the frequency of early- and late-acquired words in the texts from two specific publications was assessed: from newspapers ''Argumenty I Fakty'' and ''Vedomosti''. The results of that analysis are not consistent with the assumption that there is a common factor that determines the evolution of the language, based on which one could expect the presence of dynamics in the frequency of certain groups of words. In general, the obtained results rather contradict the formulated hypothesis: in the dynamics of the frequency of late-acquired words, a tendency toward an increase in frequency was more often observed. These results, however, do not allow to draw a conclusion about the dynamics of the frequency of late-acquired words in the Russian language in the late 20th – early 21st century.
For more than a decade, individuals composed and edited self-authored self-descriptions as social media biographies. Did these identities become more diverse over time because of a “rise in individualism” and increasing tolerance or did they become more homogenous through social learning, conformity, and fear of isolation? We analyzed longitudinal and cross-sectional Twitter bio samples with a variety of lexical and semantic methods for the 2012–2022 interval. We show that longitudinally, users diversified on lexical and semantic levels. On a cross-sectional sample—representing the state of the platform at any time point—we again observed a trend of diversification at the lexical level, but a trend of diversification reversed toward re-homogenization on the semantic level. Further, by focusing on local maxima and minima of identity similarity we identified “coordination shocks”—temporally confined intervals where similar users became overactive on the platform and drove short-term deviations from longer-term trends.
Amsal 16:18-19 adalah amsal yang banyak dikutip karena berbicara mengenai dampak dari jebakan kecongkakan dan kesombongan. Disebut jebakan, karena tanpa disadari kesombongan menjebak siapa saja dan menggiring mereka ke arah kehancuran dan kejatuhan. Sudah banyak peneliti yang membahas mengenai Amsal 16:18-19, tetapi dalam studi literatur, penelitian ini menemukan bahwa penelitian-penelitian sebelumnya hanya berfokus kepada makna frase kecongkakan dan tinggi hati serta mengabaikan unsur paralelisme yang terdapat dalam teks ini. Oleh sebab itu artikel ini akan melakukan kajian lebih spesifik dan komprehensif mengenai Amsal 16:18-19 dilihat dari lensa kajian paralelisme yang berimplikasi kepada generasi milenial. Berdasarkan metode hermeneutik sub genre sastra hikmat, maka penelitian ini menemukan: Pertama, Kehancuran Hubungan Persahabatan; Kedua, Kejatuhan Akibat Tekanan Mental dan Emosional; Ketiga, Kerusakan Kehidupan Spritual. Penelitian menjadi peringatan kepada semua generasi milenial agar berhati-hati dengan jebakan kesombongan.
This article shows how different data sources can be combined to learn about the evolution of gender norms over time. First, data on job advertisements from 1950 up to 2020 reveal that there was a significant change among Swiss employers' stated preferences regarding their prospective employees' gender. More specifically, the proportion of gender-neutral job posts increased from five to almost 95% within the observation period. To further corroborate and contextualize this finding, I complement it with time series on the relative frequency of several specific queries, such as equality between men and women, from Google's German language book corpus. These additional series are broadly consistent with the evolution of the share of gender-neutral job posts. However, it also appears that there are two distinct narratives, one concerned with the personal sphere, identity, and intimate relationships, the other with the political and public realm. Interestingly, the narrative on personal relations set off considerably earlier than the change in the proportion of gender-neutral job ads. Overall, the evidence from the different data series shows that gender norms have changed substantively, yet in a complex manner, over the past decades.
Recent proliferation of TV programming for the tween audience is supported on the Internet with advertising, fan clubs, and other online communities. These Internet tools expand TV's potential influence on human development. Yet little is known about the kinds of values these shows portray. To explore this issue, a new method for conducting content analysis was developed; it used personality indices to measure value priorities and desire for fame in TV programming. The goal was to document historical change in the values communicated to tween audiences, age 9-11, who are major media consumers and whose values are still being formed. We analyzed the top two tween TV shows in the U.S. once a decade over a time span of 50 years, from 1967 through 2007. Greenfield's (2009a) theory of social change and human development served as the theoretical framework; it views technology, as well as urban residence, formal education, and wealth, as promoting individualistic values while diminishing communitarian or familistic ones. Fame, an individualistic value, was judged the top value in the shows of 2007, up from number fifteen (out of sixteen) in most of the prior decades. In contrast, community feeling was eleventh in 2007, down from first or second place in all prior decades. According to the theory, a variety of sociodemographic shifts, manifest in census data, could be causing these changes; however, because social change in the U.S. between 1997 and 2007 centered on the expansion of communication technologies, we hypothesize that the sudden value shift in this period is technology driven. © 2008 Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace.
Across two Meta-analyses, American women's assertiveness rose and fell with their social status from 1931 to 1993. College women and high school girls' self-reports on assertiveness and dominance scales increased from 1931 to 1945, decreased from 1946 to 1967, and increased from 1968 to 1993, explaining about 14% of the variance in the trait. Women's scores have increased enough that many recent samples show no sex differences in assertiveness. Correlations with social indicators (e.g., women's educational attainment, women's median age at first marriage) confirm that women's assertiveness varies with their status and roles. Social change is thus internalized in the form of a personality trait. Men's scores do not demonstrate a significant birth cohort effect overall. The results suggest that the changing sociocultural environment for women affected their personalities, most likely beginning in childhood.