Fears of the world being taken over by unfeeling zombies might not be that far fetched. Our books indicate that English speakers are becoming less emotional. Alberto Acerbi at the University of Bristol, UK, calculated the frequency of words associated with anger, disgust, fear, sadness, surprise and joy in 5 million digitised English-language books. The use of emotional words declined over the 20th century, but there was a relative rise of fear-related words from 1980, so perhaps we are becoming more fearful (PLoS One, doi.org/kwq).
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