The Language of War: A Conceptual Replication and Extension of Abe (2012) and Matsumoto and Hwang (2013)

Legislative bodies have very important roles and understanding the psychology of their decision-making processes is a useful area study. We add to this by replicating two previous studies: Abe (2012) Matsumoto Hwang (2013) in context legislative body. The present study hypothesized that legislators who support war measures would be externally focused less cognitively complex speeches, while opponents internally focused. Speeches were obtained pertaining decisions for U.S. take military action Kosovo, Iraq, Libya. While we found mixed results depending on circumstances specific conflict, demonstrate how automated language analysis can combined with voting records better understand behavioral action, such as decision.