Paper Overview
Research Field: NLP Authors: Segun Aroyehun, Stephan Lewandowsky, David Garcia Release Date: 2026-04-21 arXiv: 2604.19699
Key Points
- Scalable epistemic orientation measure: The paper introduces the Evidence-Minus-Intuition (EMI) score, which uses large language model (LLM) ratings combined with embedding-based semantic similarity to quantify epistemic orientation in text.
- Large-scale dataset: The method is applied to 15 million parliamentary speech segments from seven countries covering 1946 to 2025, enabling long-term cross-national analysis of political discourse.
- Conceptual range: Epistemic orientation spans from evidence-based reasoning grounded in verifiable information to intuition-based reasoning rooted in beliefs and subjective interpretation.
- Association with deliberative democracy: EMI shows a positive association with deliberative democracy within countries over time, with consistent results in both contemporaneous and lagged analyses.
- Association with governance: EMI is positively associated with the transparent and predictable enforcement of law, a key dimension of governance quality.
- Implication: The epistemic character of political discourse is linked to both democratic quality and governance outcomes, highlighting discourse analysis as a tool for understanding institutional performance.
Abstract (Original)
> The pursuit of truth is central to democratic deliberation and governance, yet political discourse reflects varying epistemic orientations, ranging from evidence-based reasoning grounded in verifiable information to intuition-based reasoning rooted in beliefs and subjective interpretation. We introduce a scalable approach to measure epistemic orientation using the Evidence--Minus--Intuition (EMI) score, derived from large language model (LLM) ratings and embedding-based semantic similarity. Applying this approach to 15 million parliamentary speech segments spanning 1946 to 2025 across seven countries, we examine temporal patterns in discourse and its association with deliberative democracy and governance. We find that EMI is positively associated with deliberative democracy within countries over time, with consistent relationships in both contemporaneous and lagged analyses. EMI is also positively associated with the transparent and predictable enforcement of law as a governance dimension. These findings indicate that the epistemic nature of political discourse is consequential for both democratic quality and governance.