History · Level 1 · Foundation
The Expression of Emotions in 20th Century Books
Acerbi A, Lampos V, Garnett P, et al. (2013). PLOS ONE. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0059030 · CC BY
Step 1 of 2Read the paper
Did books get happier, sadder or less emotional over the 20th century? The authors counted how often words for six emotions (anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, surprise) appear each year from 1900 to 2000 in Google’s huge collection of digitised English books, then compared periods and compared American with British books.
How to read it
- Introduction, last two paragraphs: what the Google Ngram data is and which six mood categories are tracked.
- Methods: how counts are normalised by the word "the" and turned into z-scores, and why years after 2000 are dropped.
- Results with Figures 1–3: happy/sad periods, the overall decline, and the American–British gap.
- Discussion: the authors’ own doubts about whether books reflect how real people feel.
Step 2 of 2Take the test
5 questions · about 30 minutes including reading · pick an answer to see straight away if it’s right. Nothing is saved.
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Paper: Acerbi A, Lampos V, Garnett P, et al., PLOS ONE (2013), licensed CC BY. Summary and questions are Research Nest’s own; read the original for the full study.