The Psychology of the Common Core Debate on Twitter

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session 14
  In Roundtable Session: Policy Development and Debate

Abstract

Stretching back to the 1950’s, a long lineage of psychological studies show that the words we use provide insight into the workings of our mind. Building on this work, we used word counting techniques to examine the lexical tendencies of members of the three major factions of the Common Core debate on Twitter between 2014 and 2015. Using large-scale text mining, we examined over 500,000 tweets by more than 100,000 distinct authors to analyze the linguistic choices of the members of the three factions. Our analysis assessed four distinct psychological dimensions: mood, thinking style, level of conviction, and drive orientation. We found that the different groups had distinctly different psychological makeups that provides insights into their emotions, motivations, and strategies.

Authors

• Christian A Kolouch, University of Pennsylvania

• Jonathan A. Supovitz, University of Pennsylvania