mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Human language reveals a universal positivity bias

arXiv 1406.3855 ↗First posted 15 Jun 2014physics.soc-ph cs.CL cs.SIcited by 23

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Abstract (arXiv)

Using human evaluation of 100,000 words spread across 24 corpora in 10 languages diverse in origin and culture, we present evidence of a deep imprint of human sociality in language, observing that (1) the words of natural human language possess a universal positivity bias; (2) the estimated emotional content of words is consistent between languages under translation; and (3) this positivity bias is strongly independent of frequency of word usage. Alongside these general regularities, we describe inter-language variations in the emotional spectrum of languages which allow us to rank corpora. We also show how our word evaluations can be used to construct physical-like instruments for both real-time and offline measurement of the emotional content of large-scale texts.

Key facts. Cited by 23 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). First posted on arXiv 15 Jun 2014.

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Citing papers per year: 2021: 6; 2022: 4; 2023: 7; 2024: 3; 2025: 2; 2026: 1.

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  2. 2023SemEval-2023 Task 12: Sentiment Analysis for African Languages (AfriSenti-SemEval)cited by 41
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  6. 2023Meta-Tuning LLMs to Leverage Lexical Knowledge for Generalizable Language Style Understandingcited by 4
  7. 2021On Positivity Bias in Negative Reviewscited by 3
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  9. 2021Sentiment and structure in word co-occurrence networks on Twittercited by 2
  10. 2022United States Politicians' Tone Became More Negative with 2016 Primary Campaignscited by 2
  11. 2022A decomposition of book structure through ousiometric fluctuations in cumulative word-timecited by 2
  12. 2021Augmenting semantic lexicons using word embeddings and transfer learningcited by 1
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  2. 2022Mental Disorders on Online Social Media Through the Lens of Language and Behaviour: Analysis and Visualisationcited by 1
  3. 2021A Statistical Model of Word Rank Evolutioncited by 0
  4. 2021Electoral Programs of German Parties 2021: A Computational Analysis Of Their Comprehensibility and Likeability Based On SentiArtcited by 0
  5. 2021Ousiometrics: The essence of meaning aligns with a power-danger-structure framework instead of valence-arousal-dominancecited by 0
  6. 2023Curating corpora with classifiers: A case study of clean energy sentiment onlinecited by 0
  7. 2023An assessment of measuring local levels of homelessness through proxy social media signalscited by 0
  8. 2024Journalists, Emotions, and the Introduction of Generative AI Chatbots: A Large-Scale Analysis of Tweets Before and After the Launch of ChatGPTcited by 0
  9. 2025Negative news posts are less prevalent and generate lower user engagement than non-negative news posts across six countriescited by 0
  10. 2025Misalignment of LLM-Generated Personas with Human Perceptions in Low-Resource Settingscited by 0
  11. 2026OptimismBench: Forecasting Bias and the Alignment Effect in Language Model Judgmentcited by 0