The Content Dimensions and Historical Evolution of the Chinese Concept of Happiness in More Than 40 Years Since the Reform and Opening up-Computational Text Analysis Based on Word Embeddings Technology
This paper investigates that an emerging computerized text analysis technique,word embeddings,can capture cul-tural and concept change.In this paper,we utilize this technique to quantify temporal dynamics of the concept of happiness be-tween 1979-2021 in China.We first conducted in-depth interviews and thus formed five dimensions that generally represent Chinese people's conception of happiness,including physical need,social support,self-actualization,environment harmony and patriotism.We then used word embeddings to analyze the associations of five dimension with well-being.Results show that the correlation between happiness and physical need declines over time while happiness's correlations with self-actualization and with patriotism go upward obviously.What's more,individualism("self-actualization")and collectivism-oriented("patriotism")dimension shows a consistent trend,this means that traditional value centerring on family and country interest has also been preserved at present age.Although the harmonious relationship with natural environment has not gotten enough at-tention in general,it tends to go upward these years.By comparing diachronic changes among five dimensions,this research captures the social economic shifts,e.g.,the Reform and Opening-up in the end of 1970s,economic reform since 1992,new millennium of 2000,the new era after 2013.Our method further proves to be valid by showing that changes in the embed-ding track closely with a series of domestic social surveys.Our research demonstrates the powerful utility of computational text a-nalysis and would facilitate intersection between machine learning and social science.
concept of happinesscultural psychological changeword embeddingstext analysisnatural language learning
NETL
NSTL
万方数据
