Published in the journal Science, a study was carried out on Twitter messages. The study highlighted that the mornings are not the grumpiest times on Monday. As the day progresses, the grumpiness in on a rise. It was noted that people are happy when they wake up, but they become grumpier as the day wears on. However, there was a rebound noticed in the evenings, which peaks just before bedtime. The study was based after the examining the contents of over 500 million tweets, which have been sent in countries over two years. For the time frame, it stated that people are happier from December to late June. The reason here maybe that the days gradually lengthen in the Northern Hemisphere.
The report was published on Thursday, wherein the researchers were of the view that the discovery might not interest everyone, but it would be a notable study for those who are working on understanding how circadian rhythms and other natural influences shape our states of mind. Study leader Scott Golder, a graduate student in sociology at Cornell was noted saying that they now are able of viewing societies at a massive scale using the Internet. He further said, “This will open up opportunities for social scientists.”
According to the research, people are optimistic as the day begins, but the optimism erodes as people work, study and go about their quotidian affairs. It was even noticed that heading home to one’s family, friends, entertainment and beer, acts as a mood-lifter.
The quantifying sample was chosen for the period between February 2008 and January 2010. For the sampling purpose, a computer programme was written, which gathered up to 400 messages or tweets from each and every account created during that time frame. The compilation was finally done with and there were more than half a billion tweets for the count as the accounts in all were of around 2.4 million users.
The study was a few points noting that the tweets had their share of one expressing positive and negative feelings. Positive feelings were like enthusiasm, delight and alertness and on the other hand, there were a few indications of the negative emotions like distress, fear, anger, guilt and disgust.
The percentile noted that positive language accounted for a mere six per cent of all words used at the highest point, but the same had a drop in the counting to five per cent during working hours. For the negative messages, they were on a rise all throughout the day.
The study concluded noting that the working hours (mostly in the afternoons) tend to be tedious, but apart from that, the mornings are optimistic, which one regains as they move home. It finally peaks as the day comes to an end.
The study however is only for a defined time period and for a select Twitter users, which is basically a major disadvantage of the said study. Again, compilation includes only 400 messages of a user approximately, which would be restrictive yet again as the micro-blogging site had more than a million tweets in a day.