Moral attitudes towards effort and efficiency: a comparison between American and Chinese history

This study investigates the historical evolution of moral attitudes towards effort and efficiency in the United States and China using natural language processing techniques. Analyzing corpora of Congressional speeches (1873-2011) and People's Daily (1950-2021), the researchers developed dictionaries to quantify moral attitudes towards effort and efficiency. They found distinct patterns in the two countries, linking these attitudes to sociocultural variables like collectivism and cultural looseness. The findings shed light on the historical and socio-cultural roots of the moralization of effort and have implications for historical psychology research on moral attitudes.

Amber X. Chen, Shaojing Sun, Hongbo Yu