WIKIMEDIA COMMONS, CHRISTOPH MICHELS
Across books, songs, even news publications and social media sites, positives words are used more commonly than negative ones, according to a new study published Monday (August 29) on arXiv, an online prepublication site widely used in the physical sciences.
Hypotheses regarding the reasons language evolved as it did are varied, including purely practical explanations such as coordinating social behaviors, like hunting, and more cultural explanations, like the support of altruism and cooperation. The answer, some anthropologists believe, may be found in the language itself.
In one of the most comprehensive analyses of the English language to date, mathematicians from Cornell University and the University of Vermont collated more than 10,000 words from four sources of text—Google Books, Twitter, The New York Times, and song ...
