Study examines mood cycles shared on Twitter

An innovative study that used Twitter streams from 2.4 million people around the globe to take their emotional temperature found that people start the day in a good mood. But it decreases as work starts, then improves when work ends.

People were happier on the weekends, perhaps because their morning good mood started two hours later, indicating that they may have been sleeping in. In the United Arab Emirates, where the week runs Sunday to Thursday, the same pattern of workweek and weekend applied, but on different days.

The research, published Thursday in the journal Science, is an important part of an ongoing revolution in the social sciences, says Nicholas Christakis, a professor of medical sociology at Harvard Medical School. Instead of talking to tiny numbers of subjects, researchers can follow the digital expressions of millions of people. "It's a whole new way for social scientists to understand human beings," he says.   Read More

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