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Home » 2012 Campaign » Which party owns which words?
Aug09 17

Which party owns which words?

Posted by Jonathan Haidt in 2012 Campaign, Moral Foundations in Action, Politics

I just found a wonderful tool at CapitolWords.org which shows you the frequency with which any word is used in the congressional record since 1996. (Hat tip to Emily Ekins.) You can see which party uses each word more often, and which Senators and Representatives use the word most often. It offers a quick check on the claims I made in The Righteous Mind about how the Left owns Care and Fairness (as Equality), whereas the Right owns the rest of the moral foundations. I’m ignoring the line graphs plotting changes over time (there are hardly any) and I’ll just present the overall pie charts here:

1) THE CARE FOUNDATION

“Care”

Pie chart of occurrences of care by party

“Compassion”

Pie chart of occurrences of compassion by party

Conclusion: yes, Dems use these words more often.

2) THE FAIRNESS FOUNDATION

“Fairness”

Pie chart of occurrences of FAIRNESS by party

“Justice”

 

Pie chart of occurrences of justice by party

 

“Equality”

Pie chart of occurrences of equality by party

Conclusion: Yes, Dems use these words more, especially “equality.” The words “proportionality” and “equity” rarely occur; there’s no clear word to get at fairness-as-proportionality, which I claim is a concept more valued on the right.

 

3) THE LIBERTY FOUNDATION

“Liberty”

Pie chart of occurrences of liberty by party

 

“Freedom”

Pie chart of occurrences of freedom by party

 

Conclusion: Yes, Republicans use these words more. It’s a sign of trouble for the liberal party when liberalism forfeits the word liberty.

 

4) THE LOYALTY FOUNDATION

“Loyalty”

Pie chart of occurrences of loyalty by party

 

“Patriotism”

Pie chart of occurrences of patriotism by party

Conclusion: No, contrary to my prediction, Democrats use the words loyalty and patriotism slightly more often than do Republicans.

 

5) The Authority/subversion Foundation

“Authority”

Pie chart of occurrences of authority by party

“Obedience”

Pie chart of occurrences of obedience by party

 

 

Conclusion: No difference on “authority” (which has a great many non-moral uses in a legal and legislative context)  but yes on “obedience.”

 

6) The Sanctity/Degradation Foundation:

“Sanctity”

Pie chart of occurrences of sanctity by party

“purity”

Pie chart of occurrences of purity by party

Conclusion: Republicans use these words much more often.

 

Overall conclusion: This crude measure offers some support for the portrait I painted in chapters 7 and 8 of Righteous Mind: Democrats own the central words of the Care and Fairness foundations, Republicans own the central words of the Liberty and Sanctity foundations. Republicans used one of the two central words of the Authority foundation more than did Democrats, and contrary to my predictions, Democrats used two of the central words of the Loyalty foundations slightly more than did Republicans.

Of course, all of these words are used in many ways, and the next step would be to examine word usage in context. Are Democrats really using the word “authority” in ways that show that they deeply respect authority? For example, the most recent uses in the congressional record on the day I did this analysis are Democrats talking about  “a leading authority of Islamic culture” and “Congress has delegated much authority to the D.C. government…”  These uses shouldn’t really count. When Jesse Graham, Brian Nosek and I last did a linguistic analysis of church sermons, we found a similar picture: most of our predictions were supported by raw word counts. But once we analyzed words in context and only counted the cases that truly endorsed a foundation, then all predictions were supported.

[Note: in my original post on Aug 9, I used the word “respect” instead of “obedience,” and it showed a trend toward Democrats. But in response to Anwer’s objection below, I tested out “obedience,” which has fewer non-authority uses, and swapped it in above.]

 

17 Comments

  1. Neal W. | August 9, 2012 at 8:44 pm

    I’ve always been a bit confused by your assertion that conservatives are more about “authority.” Clearly, both political persuasions are authoritarian in their own ways. Liberals are more economically authoritarian and conservatives more socially authoritarian. If you look at Obama’s civil liberties record, you will find that he’s essentially created a bipartisan consensus that the U.S. government should be pretty authoritarian (indefinite detention, warrantless wiretapping, secret wars, killing U.S. citizens who are not an imminent threat with no due process, bullying whistle blowers, ect.).

    Reply
    • Jonathan Haidt | August 9, 2012 at 9:06 pm

      You’re surely right that Obama has exercised authority, including military authority, and that the left can be authoritarian too. But these behaviors by Obama have made many liberals uncomfortable; they don’t fit modern leftism. Also, my claim is not that liberals never use this foundation, but that they use it less; they are more ambivalent. I don’t think you’d see many social conservatives with a bumper sticker that says “question authority.”
      jon

      Reply
      • profesorar | August 9, 2012 at 10:19 pm

        Re: bumper sticker: Perhaps not, but I do think one sees many conservatives with bumper stickers proclaiming their love of “freedom”, even as they happily would deny many people and groups the ability to act “freely” in society. Something to follow up on: What is the context of GOP invocations of “freedom”? I’d wager that if you looked carefully, you’d find that GOP usage of “freedom” sometimes overlaps with Democratic usage around “rights”– both are invoked within debates around what it means to be an American and what our responsibilities are to each other and to our country. In other words, they are not antithetical; it’s more like their being terms with similar referents, but within different languages.

        Reply
        • Jonathan Haidt | August 10, 2012 at 7:50 pm

          Good point, i think the left and right really do speak different moral languages here; both sides talk about fairness and rights and liberty, and they often mean different things. But i do think that overall, the Right is more vocal about “negative liberty” (don’t tread on me), and the Left advances a more cerebral notion of “positive liberty” — promoting the dignity and welfare of persons so that they can take full advantage of their liberty. Sodomy laws and bans on gay marriage are then glaring exceptions — places where the right is happy to violate negative liberty. This is why, i think, these issues split the Right: it’s only the social conservatives who oppose gay rights. Libertarians and “economic conservatives” are often supportive of gay rights.

  2. Anwer | August 9, 2012 at 10:18 pm

    The word ‘respect’ seems to be a very weak proxy for the authority foundation. I’m sure that if we looked closely at its usage we would find many calls by liberals for us to respect the dignity of individuals.

    Reply
    • Dan Willingham | August 10, 2012 at 10:41 am

      I came here to say the same thing. You talk about “respecting the rights of individuals” which really ought to be taken as a comment on equality. . .

      Reply
      • Jonathan Haidt | August 10, 2012 at 7:46 pm

        Thanks Dan, you’re right, i just tried “respect the rights” and that is indeed a strongly democratic phrase.

        Reply
    • Jonathan Haidt | August 10, 2012 at 7:45 pm

      Thanks Anwer.
      In response to your comment, i tried out “obedience,” which does lean Republican. I tried “dignity” too, and as you predicted, dignity is a Democratic word. I tried “respect the dignity” and that too is a Democratic phrase, but it occurs so rarely — not at all in a few years — that it is less reliable.

      Reply
  3. DNW | August 10, 2012 at 8:08 pm

    Interesting results in and of themselves.

    It will also be interesting to watch any liberals who take notice of this work attempt to reclaim the liberty flag while disclaiming any authoritarian dispositions.

    “It’s a sign of trouble for the liberal party when liberalism forfeits the word liberty.”

    LOL Yeah well, no one has believed that “Liberals” are actually interested in the concept of liberty or self-direction, if it includes self-responsibility, for a very long time anyway.

    It’s not even rhetorically plausible for them to deploy the term “freedom”; unless you go Dewey with your definitions, and imagine/stipulate that real freedom is all about ensuring that the rest of the “collective” is harnessed to the task of presenting you with a smorgasbord of tasty, self-actualizing – and preferably non callous producing – life options.

    Most Americans though probably are not up on, or quite accepting of, these post-Hegelian definitional refinements despite the best efforts of Dewey, FDR, Johnson , et al.

    So, you have to ask yourself why liberals even bother deploying the term.

    My suggestion is that if they wish to attach some content to the word as they use it, that they propose a substitute etymology, and claim that “liberal” derives not from anything to do with liberty, but rather with”liberality” construed as a partial synonym for largess-dispensing; as in ” We are the largess dispensing party, and you are its client class.”

    Reply
  4. John B | August 19, 2012 at 6:11 pm

    I wonder if the Democrat’s more frequent use of the word “patriotism” is an attempt to reclaim the term from the GOP. Maybe there’s a Newt Gingrich/Frank Lundt-type memo to Democrats floating around behind the scenes?

    I’ve noticed too the word “unAmerican” being used recently by liberal commentators, referring to conservative or Republican policies and proposals (i.e. opposing gay marriage is unAmerican). I sense the word’s usage is teasing or even taunting — throwing the term back into the right’s face.

    Reply
  5. Maryann Mccall | February 11, 2013 at 8:40 am

    I can on on & on in talking about this subject, but one thing’s for sure, the use of racially coded words to appeal to certain demographics & voting blocs are harmful to the political process. But sadly politicians (most of the time republicans) use this to their advantage & it works.

    Reply
  6. nathani | March 21, 2013 at 5:27 am

    four sir, With utmost respect and due apologies, may I venture to say that title of the book should have been ” Genetics of psychology : for righteous mind ” as a better clue for fringers. The catch line creates different preceptions.
    The work is excellent. So more reason to apologies on again.

    Reply
  7. Jennie R. Merritt | April 27, 2013 at 10:07 pm

    I can on on & on in talking about this subject, but one thing’s for sure, the use of racially coded words to appeal to certain demographics & voting blocs are harmful to the political process. But sadly politicians (most of the time republicans) use this to their advantage & it works.

    Reply
  8. Adeline Sampson | May 5, 2013 at 8:25 pm

    Overall conclusion: This crude measure offers some support for the portrait I painted in chapters 7 and 8 of Righteous Mind: Democrats own the central words of the Care and Fairness foundations, Republicans own the central words of the Liberty and Sanctity foundations. Republicans used one of the two central words of the Authority foundation more than did Democrats, and contrary to my predictions, Democrats used two of the central words of the Loyalty foundations slightly more than did Republicans.

    Reply
  9. Ferdinand R. Colon | June 19, 2013 at 11:09 am

    Overall conclusion: This crude measure offers some support for the portrait I painted in chapters 7 and 8 of Righteous Mind: Democrats own the central words of the Care and Fairness foundations, Republicans own the central words of the Liberty and Sanctity foundations. Republicans used one of the two central words of the Authority foundation more than did Democrats, and contrary to my predictions, Democrats used two of the central words of the Loyalty foundations slightly more than did Republicans.

    Reply
  10. Ward Warner | June 23, 2013 at 3:39 am

    Things got more interesting when the debate ended. Shortly following the conclusion of the debate, Republican “elite Tweeters” show a sharp move to announce a Romney victory. They were not joined by any other groups, however. Over the next half hour, each of the other 5 groups, including the “average” Republicans, moved to declare Obama the winner. In fact, these “average” Republicans made one of the strongest moves toward Obama during the post-debate period. Hours after the debate, the trend was still apparent, with Obama’s Winning Index score continuing rise among Democratic elites, average Democrats, media professionals, average bi-party tweeters, and even average Republican. Meanwhile Republican elites continued to Tweet the opposite view. The sentiment scoreboard, which tracks the affect of words used in tweets about the candidates, showed a similar pattern.

    Reply
  11. Josef Houston | December 9, 2013 at 11:38 am

    Zinn goes on to highlight the extent to which people opposed the war and the subsequent propaganda and policies that were needed to “keep citizen in line” and the troops full. In the summer of 1917, the American Defense Society was formed for the sheer purpose of policing the streets and preventing “seditious street oratory.” Then, the Justice Department sponsored the American Protective League in 600 cities across the nation, which was charged with disseminating pro-war propaganda. He notes that the sheer amount and force of this propaganda makes it clear just how much citizens were opposed to this war–otherwise the government wouldn’t have spent so much time and money trying to change minds. Zinn highlights a few women who were prominent anti-war activists. Jeannette Rankin, the first female Congress member, refused to respond when her name was called in the roll call on the declaration of war. When she was finally forced to respond, she said, “I want to stand by my country, but I cannot vote for war”(372). Emma Goldman (our “protagonista”) was arrested and imprisoned for opposing the war. Her words to the jury: ”Verily, poor as we are in democracy how can we give of it to the world?…a democracy conceived in the military servitude of the masses, in their economic enslavement, and nurtured in their tears and blood, is not democracy at all. It is despotism–the cumulative result of a chain of abuses which, according to that dangerous document, the Declaration of Independence, the people have the right to overthrow”(372). Amen. The United States have forever tried to justify imperialism and enslavement with the argument that we’re spreading “democracy…civilization…Christianity” when we know nothing of any of these. And with the inclusion of the “right to overthrow” clause, it seems that the Declaration of Independence is either irrelevant or self-destructive.

    Reply

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