JOY in the Morning.

Was there ever a happier title for a book? If you've a boat about your person, surely it is floating. JITM, by PG Wodehouse, was published in 1946 and featured the Steeple Bumpleigh Horror which, while it lacked real horror by today's standards, had more than a sufficiency of Bumpleighs.

Re-reading Wodehouse recently, I reflected that, even adapted for modern scenarios (eg no butlers), he wouldn't get published today. Too gentle, d'you see? Not enough maiming. Indeed, it's hard to envision joy of any sort making it onto publishers' lists. Alexander McCall Smith perhaps, particularly the science fiction classics in which he imagines Scottish people living in Edinburgh's New Town.

However, according to new research by boffins at Bristol University, there's less emotion of any sort in novels of late. The researchers analysed the frequency of "mood" words – anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, surprise – in more than five million books published between 1900 and 2000.

I assume they bunged them into a computer rather than read the lot. Whatever the method, the result was a 14 % decrease in emotional content since 1900. I feel no anger or joy at this, but I do wonder if literature accurately reflects our sociological state. Scarily, the study also recorded increased anxiety and paranoia in modern literature, with a 12% rise since 1960 in words indicating fear.

I'm afraid that's worrying news. But is it really surprising? We live less communal lives now. Judging by the number of cold calls, many people are out to get us, and you need only catch someone's eye momentarily at the gym to see fear and paranoia writ large.

The Scottish motto Nemo Me Impune Lacessit – what're you lookin' at? – is now the watchword of western civilisation as a whole.

Still, statistics aren't the whole story. I liked the comment by someone underneath the report (the below the belt area, as it were), who said off the top of his head: "I think it's nearer 16%." The discrepancy may also be more about style than substance. The researchers additionally found variations in the use of "content-free" words such as "and", "but" and "the". Lead researcher Dr Alberto Acerbi said: "This is particularly fascinating." No, it isn't.

The thoughts of Jilly Cooper are always gripping, and she was quoted as saying the following (adopts high-pitched voice): "People are unsure how to express emotions now. They think it is a bit wet going over the top, and maybe people fear ridicule." Aye, shut up.

Sorry, pray continue, hen: "My books are very full of joy. They are like a knickerbocker glory of love." I see. In that case, I might read one. I never have hitherto, as I've a peasant's dislike of horses and find the author's hairstyle over-fussy. But I suppose one ought to discard such prejudices, however well they've served one in life.

You can see how easily literature affects the gullible though. I only have to think of Jilly Cooper, horses, posh stuff – ken? – and I start referring to myself as "one". That isn't me. I'm as common as mobiles but, in writing, you should never be yourself.

I wonder myself if Scottish books would differ from English ones. Less sunny, one would think, though generally speaking it's wrong to generalise.

Bristol's boffins found a divergence between American and "British" literature, with the latter more emotional until 1960. Thereafter, America's greater prosperity made it more free to express emotion. So the story goes.

As Scots stupidly ponder the choice between prosperous independence and continued dependence on pocket-money, the country's confused state is mirrored on the literary front, where nothing much is happening. It would be awfully Marxist to posit that economic factors influence literature to that degree. But, while the society an author lives in clearly colours what he or she writes, economic conditions provide the élan and confidence necessary to publish.

That's why wealthy Scandinavia now dominates the world's crime literature (not much joy but plenty of fear) and prog rock (Joy in the Mellotron). But that's a story for another day.