🌅 The Rise of Intuition Politics

SOURCE

Aroyehun et al. (2025)

WHAT TO KNOW

• Researchers at the University of Konstanz in Germany analyzed transcripts of 8 million speeches made in Congress from 1879 to 2022, finding a clear shift away from evidence-based language toward more intuition-based language since the 1970s. The team found the decline in fact-based rhetoric is bipartisan, and coincides with periods of increasing polarization, lower legislative productivity, and rising income inequality.

WHY IT MATTERS

• Evidence-based language in congressional speeches rose steadily beginning in the 1940s and reached a peak in the 1975-1976 session. It’s declined sharply since the peak session and now sits at a record low today. While the decline in evidence-based language was indeed bipartisan, the researchers found the use of evidence-based language in the final session included in the study (2021-2022) dropped among Republicans “substantially and more steeply” than it did among Democrats.

CONNECT THE DOTS

• Notable spikes in intuition-based language coupled with declines in fact-based rhetoric occurred during both the 56th Congress (1899 to 1901) and the 73rd Congress (1933 to 1935). If those years feel important, it’s because they are: the periods align with the 1890s Gilded Age and the Great Depression of the 1930s.