Tracing Cultural Shifts in Individualism and Collectivism through Language, Urbanization, and Internet Use

This study examines long-term cultural shifts in individualism and collectivism by analyzing English word frequencies in the Google Books Ngram corpus (1800-2022).Five pairs of individualism-collectivism words (I-we, meus, get-give, self-obligation, choose-obey) were used to construct a composite individualism-collectivism (IC) index.The results show a steady rise in the use of individualistic words, especially since the mid-20th century, indicating a cultural shift toward individualism.Correlational analyses revealed strong associations between the IC index and global ecological indicators.The IC index correlated positively with world urbanization (r = .96,p < 1.5 × 10⁻⁸, R² = .92)and internet penetration (r = .88,p < 1.4 × 10⁻⁶, R² = .78),supporting Greenfield's theory of social change and human development.These findings replicate and extend earlier studies by integrating ecological data, demonstrating that linguistic markers of culture are closely linked to large-scale societal transformations.The study highlights the value of cultural big data approaches and points toward future work on how emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, may further reshape cultural values.