Finally! How time lapse in Nobel Prize reception affects emotionality in the Nobel Prize banquet speeches

Abstract

We have a limited understanding of the role emotions play in academia, as exploring emotions consistently and comparably is challenging due to the powerful influence of contextual factors. However, we have identified an interesting setting to empirically investigate the emotional response in academia by examining Nobel Prize winners. Scientists who aspire to earn a Nobel Prize are under pressure from their environment if they have not yet received the Prize. While there are various indicators that suggest the Nobel Prize is forthcoming, the question of “when” weighs heavily on the minds of leading candidates. Consequently, waiting for the Nobel Prize is emotionally taxing. We therefore hypothesize that Nobel laureates who have experienced a prolonged wait for the award would feel a stronger sense of relief upon receiving it. We are interested in measuring their level of emotionality after receiving the Nobel Prize by analyzing their banquet speeches using linguistic content analysis. Banquet speeches provide a consistent and controlled setting to compare emotionality across scientists and over time, as we can measure the same responses to the same recognition under the same circumstances. We expect that waiting longer for the Nobel Prize will increase the positive emotionality of Nobelists’ speeches. The waiting time is determined by calculating the years since the Nobel Prize-winning work was performed. By conducting this time-lapse study, we find a robust positive correlation between waiting time and positive emotions in Nobel Prize banquet speeches. We conclude that scientists who waited longer for the Nobel Prize reported higher levels of positive emotions during their speeches.