13-05-2025
Social Studies: The ripple effects of hockey fights; the speech problem in Congress; lobbying bans backfire
Language on the floor
A study analyzed the Congressional Record from 1879 to 2022 and found that speeches in both houses used to rely on evidence more than intuition, but the opposite is true now. The peak era for speeches with more evidence-based keywords (e.g., 'fact,' 'proof,' 'analysis') than intuition-based language (e.g., 'guess,' 'doubt,' 'believe') was the mid-1970s. The trend since then toward more intuition-oriented speech is closely associated with greater partisan polarization and the greater difficulty of passing major legislation.
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Aroyehun, S. et al., 'Computational Analysis of US Congressional Speeches Reveals a Shift From Evidence to Intuition,' Nature Human Behaviour (forthcoming).
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Creative differences
In experiments, people were shown a joke, caption, drawing, poem, or story that was attributed to either a person or AI. Participants were then asked whether they could have come up with a better one. They were more confident that they could do so if the item they had been shown was purportedly authored by AI.
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Reich, T. & Teeny, J., 'Does Artificial Intelligence Cause Artificial Confidence? Generative Artificial Intelligence as an Emerging Social Referent,' Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (forthcoming).
The upside of the revolving door
Research from Boston University finds that restrictions on legislators becoming lobbyists may backfire. The idea is that this rule reduces the long-term benefits of winning office and thus discourages some people who would be good candidates from running. It also disincentivizes incumbents from leaving office. The researchers compared election trends in states that adopted lobbying restrictions and in those that hadn't done so. They found that in states with restrictions on lobbying after leaving office, legislative elections see fewer new candidates, fewer moderate candidates, and more unopposed candidates.
Fisman, R. et al., 'Revolving Door Laws and Political Selection,' National Bureau of Economic Research (March 2025).
The local news scandal
A political scientist at George Washington University analyzed data on scandals involving statewide elected officials and members of Congress from 1990 through 2022 and found that local news coverage of such scandals in the last decade fell to just one-fourth of what it was in prior decades. The upshot appears to be reduced accountability. Politicians who were the subjects of scandals were less likely to resign or retire and earned a greater percentage of the vote if they ran for reelection. National coverage (as measured by stories in The New York Times) did not make up for the falloff in local coverage.
Hayes, D., 'The Local News Crisis and Political Scandal,' Political Communication (forthcoming).
