The changing psychology of culture in German‐speaking countries: A Google Ngram study

Abstract

This article provides evidence for the long-term affiliation between ecological and cultural changes in German-speaking countries, based on the assumptions derived from social change and human development theory. Based on this theory, the increase in urbanisation, as a measure of ecological change, is associated with significant cultural changes of psychology. Whereas urbanisation is linked to greater individualistic values and materialistic attitudes, rural environments are strongly associated with collectivistic values like allegiance, prevalence of religion, and feelings of belonging and benevolence. Due to an increase in the German urbanisation rate over time, our study investigates whether Germany and the German-speaking countries around show the presumed changes in psychology. By using Google Books Ngram Viewer, we find that word frequencies, signifying individualistic (collectivistic) values, are positively (negatively) related to the urbanisation rate of Germany. Our results indicate that predictions about implications of an urbanising population for the psychology of culture hold true, supporting international universality of the social change and human development theory. Furthermore, we provide evidence for a predicted reversal for the time during and after World War II, reflecting Nazi propaganda and influence.

Parenting Practices, Family Obligation, and Adolescents’ Academic Adjustment: Cohort Differences with Social Change in China

“…Because cultural values are adapted to sociodemographic ecologies, cultural values are shifting from collectivism to individualism (Greenfield, 2009). This trend has been demonstrated by empirical evidence from different countries, such as the United States (Greenfield, 2013), Germany (Younes & Reips, 2017), Russia (Skrebyte, Garnett, & Kendal, 2016), and Japan (Hamamura, 2012).…”

Guideline for improving the reliability of Google Ngram studies: Evidence from religious terms

“…Further, we excluded the words “holy day” and “scripture” because the first expression consists of two words and the translation of the latter leads to terminologies consisting of two words (e.g., “Heilige Schrift” in German and “Sacre Scritture” in Italian). As suggested by Zeng and Greenfield [13] and Younes and Reips [14], we recommend asking several native speakers to check independently from each other whether the respective translations are in line with the original terms. In our setting, we asked two native speakers per language, who are also proficient in English.…”

“…Using Google Ngram to analyze long-term relationships between ecological and cultural changes in German-speaking countries, Younes and Reips [14] report that in spite of the theory-based prediction of an increase, the relative frequency of the individualistic word “eigen” (personal/individual) dropped over time. As highlighted by Fig 1, all of the word’s higher frequency inflections (i.e., “eigenen”, “eigene”, “eigener”, or “eigenes”) display, however, the expected rise over the course of time.…”

“…Inglehart and Baker’s [31] profound study on cultural change and the persistence of traditional values confirms these shifts, but also points out that cultural changes can be bidirectional. Using Google Ngram, Younes and Reips [14] report on such a bidirectional change by showing an overall decline for collectivistic German words but a reversal during the time of the Nazi Regime and World War II (WWII), indicating the Germans’ movement towards a more collectivistic society during that time. Accordingly, Pargament et al [32] suggest that especially in times of crises such as wars, people cling to religious beliefs.…”

“…By tracing concepts of folk believes or personal pronouns, several studies document rising individualism also for rather collectivistic societies like China [11,12,13]. Further, such developments were also examined for German-speaking countries [14] and (Soviet) Russia [15,16]. Besides these types of studies, Google Ngram research shed light on topics such as gender differences [17,18,19], the expression of emotions [20,21,22], personality [23,24], and cognition [25,26,27].…”