A recent study has concluded that US writers are more emotional than British ones, at least since around 1960 (they were about the same before). This is not a major surprise, except, perhaps, to Bridget Jones. However, what the study does not mention is what books they used, apart from the fact that they were fiction. Were they thrillers? Literary fiction? Children’s? Romance? Stephen King? J K Rowling? Stephenie Meyer? Hilary Mantel? Inevitably a US publication used the term stiff upper lip in its article on the topic. What is also not surprising is that US authors used a lot more words like independent, individual, unique, self, solitary and personal and far fewer using words like communal, team, collective, village, group and union. While this may be a terrible trait in a nation, as it means that the nation is essentially selfish (cf issues around gun control, health insurance, etc.), it does tend to produce better art, as the weird individual is generally going to be a better artist than the community-minded one. In passing, I would just mention that there is no doubt in my mind that, as a whole, the US has produced the best novels of the twentieth century.
British writing or, at least, English writing (did the study pay much attention to Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish writing?) has been certainly more devoid of passion and individualism. We did not need a study to tell us that. Writers like Hilary Mantel, Ian McEwan and Graham Swift are noted more for producing cerebral writing and less for wearing their hearts on their sleeves. Even if they do describe emotions, as Mantel clearly does, they themselves do not show it, the way many US writers do. However, without knowing what books were used and the criteria for selecting those books, I think that we can say that the general conclusions of the study may well be valid and interesting, but we cannot deduce too much from it.