Speaking to their voters, American politicians are less and less often referring to facts, they prefer to talk about their beliefs – note scientists in the magazine “Nature Human Behaviour”.
As he said considered the creator of American literature Mark Twain, “it is better not to speak at all and seem stupid than to speak and dispel any doubts.” However, the politician must speak.
In 2017, Kellyanne Conway, US President Donald Trump, used the term “Alternative Facts”which was at the forefront of the list of remembering quotes of 2017, collected by the Library of the School of the Law of the American University of Yale. Facts that are not facts can be useful in the short run, but is it better to avoid statements that can be verified? As Twain said, “Truth is the most valuable thing we have, so you should manage it sparingly.”
Do people conducting political debates focus more on facts or personal opinions? The answer to the question was dealt with by an international team of researchers led by David Garcia from the University of Konstancja. Together with colleagues from Great Britain, Israel, Austria and Germany Garcia examined the political rhetoric used in congress speeches over 140 years.
Using the methods of calculating data analysis, the authors examined the political rhetoric used in eight million speeches of members of the US Congress in 1879–2022 to see if they put pressure on data and facts, or personal beliefs and subjective interpretations.
As it turned out, Never before, members of the US Congress have never rested their rhetoric to such a large extent on personal beliefs, and in such a small one on facts. The team noticed a significant decrease in the use of political rhetoric based on evidence since the 1970s, with the lowest level in history. At the same time, researchers observed a decrease in legislative productivity, an increase in political polarization of both political parties, as well as growing economic inequalities in the USA.
Already in the nineteenth century, Mark Twain wrote about American Congressmen: “Sójka has as little moral principles as a member of our Congress. Sójka lies, jay steals, Sójka cheats, Sójka cheats on and four accidents in five accidents, he goes back to five cohesions.”
“In many democracies there are currently many fears about +disappearance of truth +: the blurring of the border between fact and fiction, which not only fuels polarization, but also undermines public trust into the institution” – notes Garcia, a professor of social and behavioral sciences.
“Productive democratic discourse balances the evidence based on the concepts of truth based on intuition,” the researcher pointed out. While the discourse based on evidence provides the basis for the “rational” debate, intuition brings emotional and experimental dimensions that can be critical for exploration and solving social problems. However, if the facts have less weight and the balance is shaken, it threatens political discourse. Exactly, researchers observed in the US congress speeches.
Between 1879 and mid -20th century, the ratio of facts used in congress speeches was relatively stable and balanced. After 1940, the balance even tilted towards facts and reached the peak in the mid -1970s. However, from 1976 to 2022 there was a significant, continuous decrease in the use of facts in congress speeches, with a historically low level. This inheritance trend applies to both Republicans and Democrats, although from 2021 the decline was even greater in the case of Republicans.
It's not just about speeches. As indicated by the authors of the study (DOI: 10.1038/S41562-025-02136-2), the results are similar in the case of analyzes of posts on Twitter/X Congress members of 2011–2022.
“One of the extraordinary aspects of our results is a strong relationship between the language based on evidence and performance,” emphasized the co -author, prof. Stephan Lewandowsky from the University of Bristol. – “The more speeches in the congress reflects relieving evidence and facts – not intuition, the better the congress results and less polarization between the parties. On the other hand, more and more relying on the language based on intuition since the 1970s is associated with a decrease in performance and growing polarization. legislature “.
“We made a huge effort to follow long -term trends in the evolution of the language of the United States Congress, analyzing records covering almost fifteen decades” – emphasized the first author of the study, Segun Aroyehun. – “We used an advanced text analysis to assess the meaning of words in speeches and compared them with the meaning of words in the dictionaries. This allowed us to observe what the speeches focused on.”
The authors began by identifying representative, characteristic keywords related to rhetoric based on evidence or intuition. The list contained 49 keywords for a language -based language (e.g. terms such as “analyzing”, “data”, “findings” and “investigation”) and 35 keywords for the language based on intuition (e.g. “point of view”, “healthy sense”, “guess” and “believe”).
Then the team calculated the proportions of individual categories of keywords used in eight million texts. The resulting number, EMI (Evidence-Minus-Intuition) describes the relationship between rhetoric based on evidence and intuition. The positive value of EMI indicates a higher participation of facts, while negative value indicates a higher share of personal opinions.
The analysis method was developed in the previous project. Jan Lasser, who has been a professor of data analysis at the University of Graz since 2024, examined the language patterns of posts on Twitter members of the US Congress in 2011–2022. “Even during this period there was a change in the style of argumentation,” she pointed out. – “Personal beliefs gradually gained importance and were more and more often presented separately from scientific facts.”
Paweł Wernicki (PAP)
PMW/ ZAN/
