US Congressional Speal gets less evidence -based over time

The language that chose members of the US Congress uses in the debate increasingly includes words like “false” and “doubts” about words like “proof” and “reason”.

This linguistic tendency away from evidence in favor of intuition was revealed in an artificial intelligence analysis of millions of congressal speech transcripts. It also coincides with both greater political polarization in Congress and a decrease in the number of laws introduced through the congress, says Stephan Lewandowsky at the University of Bristol in the UK.

“We can think that Truthing is something we can achieve by analyzing evidence, or we can think of it as a result of intuition or ‘intestinal feeling’,” says Lewandowsky. “These notions of honesty and truth are explicit in how we use everyday language.”

Adaptation of an off-the-shelf AI language model, Lewandowsky and his Colleugues analysis of the words used in prints of 8 million congressing speeches given between 1879 and 2022. “Suspends” and “Guts.” They are calculated a score showing whether a given congress number spoke against evidence or intuition.

They found that Congress has deeply favored intuition -based language rather than evidence -based language since the 1970s. Before then, intuition -based language also spiked in speeches made at the gilded age in the years 1899 to 1901 and the great depression in the years 1933 to 1935.

“The results fit other impressions of increasing anti-intellectalism, populism and a rejection of scientific experts in recent decades,” says John Jost at New York University.

A special strength of the research is that it evaluates the context in which word appears instead of just tracking their frequency, says Renáta Németh at Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary. “These models can capture depert, often subtle connections between words, even reflects cultural meanings and social relationships,” she says.

Next, Lewandowsky and his colleagues are planning to look for similar language changes for individual legislators both in congressional and in social media posts. They also appear to compare similar trends among other parliaments throughout history, included legislators speaking from Italy and Germany.