We demonstrate that the concerns expressed by Garcia et al. are misplaced,
due to (1) a misreading of our findings in [1]; (2) a widespread failure to
examine and present words in support of asserted summary quantities based on
word usage frequencies; and (3) a range of misconceptions about word usage
frequency, word rank, and expert-constructed word lists. In particular, we show
that the English component of our study compares well statistically with two
related surveys, that no survey design influence is apparent, and that
estimates of measurement error do not explain the positivity biases reported in
our work and that of others. We further demonstrate that for the frequency
dependence of positivity---of which we explored the nuances in great detail in
[1]---Garcia et al. did not perform a reanalysis of our data---they instead
carried out an analysis of a different, statistically improper data set and
introduced a nonlinearity before performing linear regression.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, 1 table. Expanded version of reply appearing in
PNAS 201