Congress approval rating tanking over poor choice of words
2015-05-11
(Press-News.org) U.S. Congress approval ratings are at record lows. Now a new study suggests that this may be partly due to a decline in the use of warm, agreeable language in the House.
The study, co-authored by University of British Columbia business professor Karl Aquino, found that the use of prosocial words -- language such as cooperate or contribute -- by lawmakers predicts public approval of Congress six months later.
"If members of Congress want to be viewed more positively by the public, it appears that the words they use matter," says Aquino, a marketing and behavioural science professor in at UBC's Sauder School of Business. "Our study suggests that the electorate is listening and reacts favourably when Congressional members use prosocial language."
The researchers' results were derived from a textual analysis of 124 million words spoken in the U.S. House of Representatives between 1996 and 2014, using a computer model that searched for words validated as having prosocial connotations. The words whose decline most strongly predicted a decline in public approval were gentle, involve, educate, contribute, concerned, give, tolerate, trust and cooperate.
Congress's approval rating has slumped precipitously since 2002, when public approval was reliably over 50 per cent. Recent polls cite ratings as low as only 10 per cent.
Aquino and his co-authors controlled for factors which may have contributed to declining approval, such as the unemployment rate, and governance factors such as the number of bills passed and presidential vetoes. They found that warm, prosocial language was the strongest single predictor of public sentiment.
The authors suggest the media may be playing a role in this relationship. They found that prosocial language predicted positive media coverage and positive coverage predicted public approval.
The forthcoming Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences study, "A Decline in Prosocial Language Helps Explain Public Disapproval of the U.S. Congress" was co-authored by Aquino with lead author UBC Psychology PhD graduate Jeremy Frimer and Harrison Oakes of the University of Winnipeg, Jochen Gebauer of the University of Mannheim and Sauder PhD graduate Luke Zhu, now with the University of Manitoba.
INFORMATION:
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2015-05-11
Researchers report that as the world population increases and food demand has grown, globalization of trade has made the food supply more sensitive to environmental and market fluctuations. This leads to greater chances of food crises, particularly in nations where land and water resources are scarce and therefore food security strongly relies on imports.
The study assesses the food supply available to more than 140 nations (with populations greater than 1 million) and demonstrates that food security is becoming increasingly susceptible to perturbations in demographic ...
2015-05-11
(MEMPHIS, Tenn. - May 11, 2015) Childhood cancer survivors - especially those whose treatment included brain irradiation or chemotherapy with glucocorticoids - are 14 percent more likely to be obese than their healthy peers. The St. Jude Children's Research Hospital study appears today in the journal Cancer.
Of the 1,996 childhood cancer survivors in this study, 36.2 percent had a body mass index (BMI) of 30 kilograms per meters squared or more, which qualifies as obese. That was 14 percent greater than the expected prevalence based on federal health survey data of a ...
2015-05-11
(MEMPHIS, Tenn. - May 11, 2015) Researchers have identified three genes that play a pivotal role in the brain tumor choroid plexus carcinoma (CPC), a discovery that lays the groundwork for more effective treatment of this rare, often fatal cancer. St. Jude Children's Research Hospital scientists led the study, which appears today in the journal Cancer Cell.
The genes - TAF12, NFYC and RAD54L - are involved in DNA repair and regulation. Researchers showed that CPC often has at least one extra copy of each gene and demonstrated that the genes work cooperatively to launch ...
2015-05-11
A new study finds that men with prostate cancer that has spread to nearby lymph nodes, who have a significant risk of dying from the disease, can benefit from the addition of radiation therapy to treatments that block the effects of testosterone. The findings imply that the almost half of patients with node-positive disease nationwide who this study found had not received combination therapy were not receiving the treatment that could best control their tumor and possibly save their lives. The report from investigators at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Cancer ...
2015-05-11
EAST LANSING, Mich. - When it comes to winning evolutionary fitness races, the tortoise once again prevails over the hare.
In the current issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of BEACON scientists centered at Michigan State University found that limiting migrations among populations of bacteria produced better adaptations.
The cost, however, was that the bacteria evolved slower. Taking your time, however, isn't always a bad thing, said Joshua Nahum, MSU biocomputational research associate.
"We name this the Tortoise-Hare pattern, as it is ...
2015-05-11
Achieving sustainability requires a sophisticated understanding of continuously evolving resource, production, and consumption systems that make up society's relationship to nature. In a special new issue, Yale's Journal of Industrial Ecology illustrates how the field is increasingly turning to complexity science for tools and insights in its pursuit of reduced environmental impacts.
In the special issue, "Advances in Complex Adaptive Systems and Industrial Ecology," a group of international researchers show how integration of complex adaptive system into the study of ...
2015-05-11
May 11, 2015 -- (BRONX, NY) -- A survey of more than 1,000 U.S. adults has found that misperceptions about miscarriage and its causes are widespread. Results of the survey, conducted by researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University and Montefiore Health System, show that feelings of guilt and shame are common after a miscarriage and that most people erroneously believe that miscarriages are rare. The findings were published online today in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology.
Nearly one million miscarriages occur in the U.S. each year. Miscarriages ...
2015-05-11
May 11, 2015 -- Ongoing efforts by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to reduce the population impact of traumatic brain injury (TBI) are documented in the May/June issue of The Journal of Head Trauma Rehabilitation, official journal of the Brain Injury Association of America. The journal is published by Wolters Kluwer.
"This special issue draws attention to the need for strategies to prevent TBI and to lessen the substantial physical, psychological, economic, and social effects among people who experience it," write co-editors Jeneita M. Bell, MD, MPH ...
2015-05-11
As the nation observes the May 17 anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that ended racial segregation in public schools, a new study has found that desegregated schooling is tied to better performance for certain cognitive abilities in older African American Adults.
This research is published in an article titled "Education Desegregation and Cognitive Change in African American Older Adults," appearing in the May 2015 issue of The Journals of Gerontology, Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences.
"Our findings suggest that there is a slight, but statistically ...
2015-05-11
EVANSTON, Ill. -- Treatments used by traditional healers in Nigeria have inspired scientists at Northwestern University to synthesize four new chemical compounds that could one day lead to better therapies for people with psychiatric disorders.
In a paper published online in the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition, the scientists detail how they created these natural compounds by completing the first total syntheses of two indole alkaloids -- alstonine and serpentine. These alkaloids, found in various plant species used by healers in Nigeria to treat people ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Congress approval rating tanking over poor choice of words
