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Description: The Industrial Revolution is one of the most significant periods of modern human history. It was associated with an accelerated pace of technical innovations and an unprecedented increase in wealth and living standards. The Industrial Revolution developed first in the British Isles before expanding to other regions in North Europe. While the causes of this early development are multifactorial, a recent hypothesis has advanced the idea that certain psychological changes occurred in the British zeitgeist before the onset of industrialization, which made it more likely to occur there than in other countries (Baumard, 2018). Namely, it is thought that British society developed preferences for traits related to long-term oriented cognition, such as cooperation, industriousness, and intellectual exploration. These changes, in turn, are thought to be related to the higher living standards in England relative to the rest of Europe, which liberated cognitive resources from short-term survival demands to more long-term goals. In this project, we aim to characterize the long-term evolution in the cultural importance of moral virtues in England in the period leading to the Industrial Revolution and its relation to living standards. Using Natural Language Processing tools, we will track the diachronic variation of words pertaining to various virtues and traits in theatre plays from 1550 to 1800. We will also compare English's diachronic trends to those of France. While England and France were the forerunners of the Industrial Revolution in terms of economic volume and the pace of adopting innovation (Mokyr, 1999), France developed an Industrial sector more than 50 years after England. Thus, comparing these two countries, which are geographically and culturally neighbors, can provide valuable insights into the specific psychological dynamics that predated Industrialization.