Over five decades, popular songs in the US and Germany have become more self-focused—as indicated by usage of pronouns such as "I," "me," and "mine—while no such trend was seen for the most popular songs in Japan and Hong Kong. Marius Golubickis of United Arab Emirates University and colleagues present these findings in the open access journal PLOS One on June 24, 2026.
Researchers have examined the possibility that global society may be becoming more self-centric by measuring how often different pronouns appear in cultural products such as books, movie scripts, and lyrics. Compared to first-person plural pronouns, such as "we" and "us," a higher proportion of first-person singular pronouns, such as "I" and "me," can indicate greater self-focus.
Prior pronoun studies show that music lyrics from the US, the UK, and Canada have become more self-focused in recent decades. However, few studies have examined trends elsewhere, especially in East Asian societies that place a greater emphasis on the collective group, in contrast to more individualistic Western societies.
To address that gap, Golubickis and colleagues analyzed the top ten most popular songs in the US, Germany, Japan, and Hong Kong for each year from 1970 to 2019. They used software called Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count to extract the linguistic content of each song. A statistical method known as mixed linear modeling enabled them to analyze changes in pronoun usage over time, while accounting for other factors that could potentially influence pop lyrics.
They found that self-focused language rose significantly between 1970 and 2019 in the US and Germany—two more individualistic countries. Meanwhile, use of self-focused language was relatively stable over time in the two more collectivist countries, Japan and Hong Kong.
These findings suggest that increases in self-centrism, as indicated by pronoun use in song lyrics, may not be universal and may vary depending on societal contexts. The study authors underscore the need for cultural sensitivity when exploring global trends.
Future research could build on this study by incorporating information about music genres or analyzing self-focused language in books and other media from different societal contexts.
The authors add: "Popular songs act like cultural time capsules. Across five decades of hit music, we found that self-focused language increased in the United States and Germany, but not in Japan or Hong Kong. This shows that changes in self-expression are not simply a global trend – they are shaped by the cultural worlds in which music becomes popular."
Author interview: https://plos.io/3SFn2QE
In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS One: https://plos.io/4xqvTpc
Citation: Golubickis M, Jalalian P, Masroujah LS, Selvaraj ES, Sharma Y, Seow SH, et al. (2026) Are societies becoming more self-centric? Evidence from five decades of popular music spanning three continents. PLoS One 21(6): e0349765. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0349765
Author countries: UAE, UK, Singapore, Germany.
Funding: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work.
