Table 1.

Changes in the use of affection words and of individualism words in the simplified Chinese books, 1960–2008.

	r with year	Beta for year square	Use 1960 vs. 2008 (SD)	d	% change	r with first-person singular pronoun
Love you (Ai Ni)	0.77∗∗∗	−0.07	0.000020–0.000042% (0.000011%)	2.00	210%	0.53∗∗∗
Like you (Xihuan Ni)	0.71∗∗∗	0.24	0.00022–0.00027% (0.000064%)	0.78	123%	0.89∗∗∗
Kiss (Qin Wen)	0.84∗∗∗	−0.02	0.000049–0.00012% (0.000042%)	1.69	245%	0.73∗∗∗
Hug (Yong Bao)	0.49∗∗∗	−0.04	0.00053–0.00051% (0.00010%)	−0.20	96%	0.89∗∗∗
Verbal affection	0.74∗∗∗	0.20	0.00024–0.00031% (0.000073%)	0.96	129%	0.86∗∗∗
Non-verbal affection	0.61∗∗∗	−0.03	0.00057–0.00062% (0.00014%)	0.36	109%	0.87∗∗∗
All affection words	0.67∗∗∗	0.05	0.00081–0.00093% (0.00021%)	0.57	115%	0.88∗∗∗

Verbal affection words include “love you” and “like you” and non-verbal affection words include “kiss” and “hug.” Usage means and d (difference in terms of standard deviations) are based on the frequency of affection words at 1960 and 2008. The Beta for year square is from a regression equation with the square of year (centered) as the dependent variable. ^∗∗∗p < 0.001.