ABSTRACT

Theory and research in political psychology, most of which is based on self-report studies of ordinary citizens, suggests that liberals and conservatives differ in terms of personality traits, value priorities, cognitive styles, and motivational tendencies. These psychological characteristics may be studied unobtrusively through the use of text analysis, which is especially valuable when it comes to investigating the characteristics of political elites, who are otherwise extremely difficult to study, despite their importance for understanding ideological dynamics. In the present research program we used Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) software to analyze the language used by 279–388 members of the U.S. Congress on Twitter (n = 88,874 tweets), Facebook (n = 15,636 posts), and the floor of Congress (n = 6,159 speeches) over the same four-month period (February 9–May 28, 2014). Consistent with findings based on ordinary citizens, we observed that conservative legislators used more language pertaining to religion, power, threat, inhibition, risk and – on the floor of Congress – tradition and resistance to change. Conversely, liberal legislators used more language pertaining to affiliation, achievement, benevolence, emotion in general, ‘social’ concerns and – on the floor of Congress – universalism, stimulation, and hedonism. Implications for the study of political psycholinguistics focusing on ideological and contextual variability in communication patterns on various platforms are discussed, as are differences in language used by ordinary citizens and political elites.

摘要

政治心理学的理论和研究大多基于对普通公民的自我报告研究，这表明自由主义者和保守主义者在人格特质，价值取向，认知方式和动机倾向方面有所不同。可以通过使用文本分析来毫不费力地研究这些心理特征，这在调查政治精英的特征时特别有价值，尽管他们对于理解意识形态动态很重要，但这些精英很难学习。在当前的研究程序中，我们使用语言查询和单词计数（LIWC）软件分析了美国国会279–388名会员在Twitter（n = 88,874 tweets），Facebook（n= 15,636个职位），以及国会席位（n=在同一四个月的时间（2014年2月9日至5月28日）中的6,159条演讲）。与基于普通公民的调查结果相一致，我们观察到保守的立法者使用了更多与宗教，权力，威胁，压制，风险以及（在国会席上）传统和抵制变革有关的语言。相反，自由派立法者使用了更多与归属，成就，仁慈，情感，一般的“社会”关注有关的语言，以及在国会席上有关普遍主义，刺激和享乐主义的语言。讨论了研究政治心理学语言学的含义，这些语言心理学关注在各种平台上的交流模式中的意识形态和上下文可变性，以及普通公民和政治精英所使用的语言差异。