Facts go backwards, because intuition drives modern American politics

According to groundbreaking research, analysing nearly a century and a half of Congress’s phonetic patterns, Congress has achieved historical political speech in evidence-based political speech, increasingly relying on personal beliefs rather than facts.

The international study, led by the University of Constance, this month was published in Natural Behavior, which looked at 8 million speeches delivered on the U.S. Congress floor between 1879 and 2022. Researchers track the use of evidence-based language, while evidence-based language and their use of “intuitive-based” speech reveals the discourse of fact-based discourses that have been based on reality since the mid-1970s.

“In many democracies, there is a lot of attention to ‘declining truth’ at present: the blurring of the line between fact and novels not only fuels polarization, but also undermines public trust in institutions,” explains David Garcia, professor of social and behavioral data science at the University of Constance.

The research team developed a complex text analysis method to measure what they call the Evidence Minority Score (EMI) score. Positive EMI scores indicate that language originates from evidence, facts and data, while negative scores reflect rhetoric based on feelings, instincts, and personal values.

After tracking the relative use of the two language types, researchers found a consistent pattern: from 1879 to the early 20th century, Congressional rhetoric maintained a relatively stable balance between fact and intuition. This balance began to turn to more fact-based discourse in the 1940s, peaked in the mid-1970s, and then began to decline steadily, continuing to this day.

The timing of the decline coincides with several major developments in American politics, including partisan polarization and growing economic inequality, especially the introduction of a television-transmitted Congressional lawsuit through C-Span in 1979.

Perhaps most worryingly, researchers found a strong correlation between evidence-based language decline and several indicators of democratic health. As the words of facts decrease, the productivity of Congress declines, partisan polarization increases, and income inequality expands.

“One of the amazing aspects of our results is the close connection between evidence-based language and performance,” said Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, president of Cognitive Psychology at the University of Bristol. “The more speeches in Congress reflect a dependence on evidence and facts rather than intuition, the better Congress performs, the less polarization there will be between the two sides. On the contrary, since the 1970s, the reliance on intuitive-based language has been increasingly dependent on decline in performance and increasing polarization in the 1970s. Obviously, how it uses politicians to use language in the Legislature.”

Although both major parties have experienced this downward trend, research shows that Republicans have shown a particularly decline in evidence-based language since 2021.

For the analysis, the researchers first identified representative keywords related to each language style. Evidence-based language includes words such as “analysis,” “data,” “discovery,” and “investigation,” while intuition-based language has terms such as “view,” “common sense,” “guess,” and “believe.”

The study is based on early work by Jana Lasser, a professor of data analysis at Graz University, who studied language patterns in Twitter posts by members of Congress between 2011 and 2022. “Even during this period, the way of arguments changed,” Lasser explained. “Personal beliefs are gradually becoming important and increasingly separate from scientific facts.”

The authors of the study raised some factors that could lead to a shift away from evidence-based speech. These include group control over those speaking at the Congressional level, changes in Congress rules and procedures, expansion of executive power and, perhaps most importantly, the impact of media coverage encourages the impact of performative speeches designed to attract attention rather than conduct substantive policy discussions.

Although the findings paint a picture of the current state of political discourse, the researchers stress that understanding these trends point to potential solutions. They noted: “Programs such as promoting cooperation and communication across partisan boundaries can help rebuild a stronger discourse of democracy.”

The study concluded with a challenge that resonated outside the halls of Congress: “Ultimately, the challenge is to host Congress (and extend, a deliberate public), where Congress values ​​truth, polarization is to stop political and legislative outcomes, which reflects the various needs of citizens.”