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- Title
Linguistic Markers of Individualism and Collectivism in Christian Music Lyrics: Relative Prevalence and Change Over Time.
- Authors
Good, Marie; Gerike, Ariya; Tuinstra, Summer
- Abstract
Many social scientists have hypothesized that American culture has become more individualistic over time. This hypothesis has been supported by studies that have assessed changes in "self-focused" individual attitudes (e.g., self-esteem, narcissism; Twenge et al., 2008, 2012a), as well as those that have analyzed shifts in "individualistic" linguistic content found in cultural products such as books and music (e.g., DeWall et al., 2011). Although trends around individualism and collectivism in American secular culture have been fairly well-studied, we know very little about whether similar trends can be observed within the U.S. Christian church. While the church is, of course, part of the broader culture in which it is situated, it also represents a subculture with norms and values that may be distinct from secular America. In the present study, we addressed this issue via an analysis of the lyrics of 821 Christian songs. Specifically, we used text analysis software to identify the prevalence of, and change over time in, linguistic markers of individualism and collectivism within the lyrical content of two genres of Christian music: contemporary popular songs (with publication dates ranging from 1978 to 2013) and congregational songs (written from 1640 to 2016). Analyses revealed that individualist lyrics were more prevalent than collectivist lyrics overall, but especially in popular songs. There was also evidence of a slight shift towards more individualist lyrical content over time in both genres. These findings offer novel evidence that the Christian church--like secular culture--tends to endorse values of individualism relatively more than collectivism, and this tendency has increased (although the effect size was small) over time.
- Subjects
CONTEMPORARY Christian music; SOCIAL scientists; COLLECTIVISM (Social psychology); INDIVIDUALISM; POPULAR music; POPULAR music genres
- Publication
Journal of Psychology & Christianity, 2023, Vol 42, Issue 4, p276
- ISSN
0733-4273
- Publication type
Article