120-year text analysis reveals how society’s view of lawyers’ personalities has shifted

A recent study published in Personality and Individual Differences provides evidence that public perceptions of lawyers’ personalities have shifted significantly over the past 120 years. By analyzing millions of books, researchers found that society tends to view lawyers as highly conscientious and open to new experiences, but increasingly lacking in warmth. These findings suggest that the way we write about legal professionals reflects broader cultural and historical changes in the workplace and society.

Throughout history, legal professionals have occupied a complicated place in the public imagination. People often expect them to act as defenders of justice, yet they also frequently face criticism for being self-serving or morally ambiguous.

These conflicting stereotypes shape how much the public trusts the legal system. Whether society views a lawyer as a noble advocate or a manipulative operator directly impacts their professional authority. Because of this tension, researchers wanted to understand exactly how societal descriptions of lawyers have changed over time.

“The idea came from both TV/film portrayals and real-world legal cases. We noticed that lawyers are often described in very different ways, which made us curious: how has this profession actually been portrayed over time?” said Zehua (Rankie) Jiang, who conducted the research along with colleagues from Zhejiang University.

The scientists aimed to map these evolving stereotypes by looking at everyday language. By examining a massive collection of written texts, they hoped to capture the dominant traits associated with the profession across different historical eras.

The scientists analyzed text from 14,953,356 English-language books published between 1900 and 2019. They used a massive database known as the Google Books Ngram dataset, which contains millions of digitized texts from a wide variety of genres.

The research team focused on the Big Five personality traits, a widely accepted psychological model that categorizes human personality into openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Openness refers to creativity and intellectual curiosity, while conscientiousness involves being organized, practical, and responsible. Extraversion describes outgoing and energetic behavior. Agreeableness relates to being cooperative and friendly, and neuroticism involves emotional instability or anxiety.

The scientists compiled a list of 315 adjectives linked to these five traits. They then used computer programming to find every time these adjectives appeared right next to the words “lawyer” or “lawyers” in the books.

To establish a baseline for comparison, the researchers also tracked how often these same adjectives were used to describe a “person” or “persons.” They calculated relative frequencies to account for the fact that the total number of books published increased massively over the century.

The analysis revealed patterns in how writers described the legal profession. Overall, conscientiousness was the most frequently mentioned personality trait across the 120-year span.

The prominence of different traits shifted depending on the time period. Between 1900 and 1939, agreeableness was the most common trait used to describe lawyers.

Starting in the 1940s, conscientiousness became the dominant descriptor, and it remained at the top until the late 1990s. The researchers noted that words like “practical,” “conservative,” and “ambitious” were consistently used during this time.

The rise of conscientiousness in the mid-twentieth century might be linked to the post-war expansion of corporate law firms. These large organizations likely placed a high premium on diligence, reliability, and strict organizational discipline.

By the 2010s, openness had surpassed all other traits to become the most frequently discussed dimension in relation to lawyers. The scientists suggest this recent shift might reflect broader cultural changes that emphasize individualism, creativity, and technological innovation in the workplace. Extraversion remained relatively stable in fourth place throughout the entire century, while neuroticism was rarely mentioned.

“The shift over time was quite interesting—lawyers were described as more agreeable in earlier periods, then more responsible, and more recently as more open and innovative,” Jiang told PsyPost. “Overall, conscientiousness is the most emphasized trait in descriptions of lawyers. Compared to a ‘typical person,’ lawyers are more often portrayed as conscientious, open, extraverted, emotionally stable, and somewhat less agreeable.”

The scientists also evaluated the polarity of these descriptions, meaning they checked whether the adjectives were positive or negative. Compared to the general population, lawyers were described much more positively in the areas of conscientiousness, openness, and extraversion.

At the same time, lawyers were described more negatively in agreeableness and neuroticism. In fact, the data provides evidence that the gap in agreeableness between lawyers and the general public grew wider over time, with lawyers increasingly portrayed as less cooperative and more aggressive.

The perception of extraversion also experienced a notable shift. Lawyers were seen as more extraverted than the general public before the 1960s, but this score dropped sharply in the 1990s, eventually falling below that of the average person.

It is important to note that these historical portraits represent societal stereotypes rather than the actual personality traits of real-world lawyers. The study captures how the profession is constructed in social and cultural conversations, which may not completely match how individual legal professionals behave in their private lives.

The research design also comes with a few limitations. The scientists only analyzed English-language books, meaning the findings might not apply to other linguistic or cultural contexts around the world.

Going forward, “we’re interested in looking at other professions, and we’re also working on a more general framework for tracking personality descriptions over time,” Jiang said.

The study, “Personality descriptions of lawyers: A 120-year big data analysis of English books,” was authored by Liang Xu, Yiwen Wu, and Zehua Jiang.