Narratives from European African Encounters

Abstract: Narratives condition minds, justify actions, and shape human behavior. In intergroup encounters, they define what is perceived as acceptable and guide how outgroup members are understood and treated. We analyze over 900,000 pages from 1,876 European travel accounts to Africa (1400–1900) to trace the development and diffusion of character-based narratives over time. Using computational linguistics, we classify narrative roles through the lens of Affect Control Theory (ACT), which models identity perceptions along three affective dimensions: Evaluation, Potency, and Activity (EPA). Europeans systematically cast Africans and Arabs in negative roles. While narratives are often persistent, we find that character portrayals shift in response to major historical events, including the transatlantic slave trade and colonization.

Further information on the Economics Research Seminar can be found here. 

Autor: Responsible: Thomas Steger