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Psychological Effects of Cultural Upheavals from Millions of Song Lyrics Over 100 Years
David M. Markowitz
TL;DR
It remains important to understand whether societal upheavals modify language and whether such changes occur within individuals. The study analyzes over 3 million songs across three upheavals using within-artist and between-artist comparisons. Artists wrote more about “life and freedom” and less about “courtship and nightlife” following each event, with “moral conflict” elevated.
Problem
It remains important to understand whether societal upheavals modify language and whether such changes occur within individuals.
Method
The study analyzes over 3 million songs across three upheavals using within-artist and between-artist comparisons.
Results
Artists wrote more about “life and freedom” and less about “courtship and nightlife” following each event, with “moral conflict” elevated.
Takeaways & Limitations
Cultural upheavals are associated with changes in individual artists’ verbal behavior in popular music.
Takeaways & Limitations
The results are not cause-and-effect evidence and should be interpreted as associations.
Abstract
from arXiv · showhide
Cultural upheavals impact many aspects of social life, and many studies have investigated their impact on language patterns. However, few investigations have isolated the impact of upheavals on individuals at scale in popular media. The current work evaluated millions of song lyrics spanning more than a century in search of within-artist and between-artist signals of distress from the Vietnam War, the terrorist attacks of 9/11, and COVID-19. Compared to a five-year baseline, rates of self-references - a marker of psychological distancing - were significantly reduced after the Vietnam War and September 11th. Cognitive processing terms were elevated post-upheaval vs. pre-upheaval, which indicated artists' increased attempts to make meaning from such massive disruptions. Content patterns corroborated these findings as artists wrote more about "life and freedom" (societal conditions) and less about "courtship and nightlife" (interpersonal connection) following the upheavals. Cultural upheavals modify individual and collective verbal behavior, demonstrating their far-reaching impact on society.
1 Department of Communication, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824
The paper concerns psychological effects of cultural upheavals as reflected in language and verbal behavior.
- Its focus includes language and verbal behavior.
- Psychological distress is among the paper’s stated keywords.
- The paper examines psychological effects of cultural upheavals.
Millions of Song Lyrics Over 100 Years
The study uses song lyrics as a large-scale record of how cultural upheavals shape language, psychological processing, and social orientation. It compares responses within artists and between artists across the Vietnam War, 9/11, and COVID-19.
- The study tests whether upheavals alter linguistic markers of emotion, social orientation, and cognitive processing.
- Song lyrics provide a time-based record of personal, social, and cultural reflections under changing conditions.
- The study evaluates millions of song lyrics across the Vietnam War, 9/11, and COVID-19 pandemic.
- Its distinctive contribution is measuring both within-artist change and between-artist differences at scale.
- Prior research links shared upheavals with less self-focused communication and increased cognitive processing as people make meaning from disruption.
Method
The researchers assembled and processed a large lyric corpus, operationalized each upheaval with a symmetric five-year window, and modeled language outcomes using within-artist and between-artist predictors.
- The final analytic sample contained 3,064,753 songs after matching, deduplication, and filtering for dates and LIWC scores.
- Non-English lyrics were translated into English because the language dimensions of interest required English texts.
- LIWC measured self-references, collective-references, analytic thinking, and cognitive processing terms as percentages of lyric word counts.
- Each upheaval was represented by a critical date with a symmetric five-year observation window.
- Songs were classified as pre- or post-upheaval only when their entire possible release interval fell on one side of the critical date.
- Group-mean centering separated within-artist change from between-artist differences in linear mixed models with artist, genre, and language controls.
Results
Across three upheavals, song lyrics showed changes in self-reference, collective reference, analytic thinking, cognitive processing, and thematic content. Exploratory analyses further examined how these patterns evolved over time and whether they were robust to content controls.
- Compared with pre-upheaval lyrics, self-references decreased after the Vietnam War and 9/11, while cognitive processing terms increased after both events.
- After COVID-19, analytic thinking and cognitive processing terms increased within artists, while self- and collective-reference changes were marginal.
- Exploratory Content Effects: Theme controls produced statistically significant relationships for Vietnam collective references and COVID-19 collective references that were not significant or only marginal without controls.
- Exploratory Content Effects: Artists wrote more about “life and freedom” and less about “courtship and nightlife” after each upheaval, while “moral conflict” increased.
Discussion
Across three US upheavals, song lyrics showed changes in psychological style, themes, and trajectories, with distinct within-artist and between-artist patterns. These effects included reduced self-references, elevated cognitive processing, more societal content, and persistent deviations from baseline.
- Discussion: Self-references decreased after the Vietnam War and September 11th, while cognitive processing terms increased after upheavals.These patterns were interpreted as increased psychological distancing and attempts to make meaning from disruption.
- Discussion: Within-artist effects persisted over time: self-references remained below baseline for over a decade after the Vietnam War and September 11th, while collective-references remained elevated after 9/11.Vietnam War effects became detectable approximately three-to-four years after escalation and did not return to baseline over a decade.
- Discussion: After 9/11, self-references declined within artists but increased between artists, showing that individual and sample-level processes could move in opposite directions.A single pooled estimate would have missed these distinct patterns.
- Discussion: Thematic controls left the within-artist and between-artist style estimates substantively unchanged, indicating that the style findings were not explained by shifting topics.The study used more than 3 million songs from 1903 to 2026 and separated within-artist from between-artist patterns.
- Discussion: Artists wrote more about “life and freedom” and less about “courtship and nightlife” after each upheaval, with “moral conflict” elevated after 9/11 and COVID-19.The authors relate this pattern to less interpersonal content and more societal, existential, and moral content.
- Limitations and Future Directions: The findings are correlational, have notably small effect sizes, rely partly on machine translation, and focus on US-centric upheavals.Future work should examine global events and how nationality or distance from an upheaval modifies language patterns.