If you’re happy and you know it… tweet! A new study has been released that shows that mood affects how you tweet.
Researchers from the University of Indiana found that people who are happy tend to retweet others who are happy. And the angry Twitter users? They stick together too.
The research says that beyond demographic features – like age, sex and race – it’s psychological features that brings people on social networks together.
Words like “loneliness” can be associative, meaning that those who employ the word “loneliness” often tweet or retweet to others who also use that word.
The research examined six months worth of tweets from 102,009 users. Going into the study, they supposed that Twitter wouldn’t display any real psychological associative mixing of emotional states, given that relationships are asymmetrical (i.e. you can follow without being followed back) and fundamentally different from in-person relationships. However, after examining a total of 129 million tweets, they discovered that Twitter users prefer to associate with people that share the same level of happiness as themselves.
Basically, if you’re a happy person, you’ll retweet other happy people. And if you’re sad, you’ll congregate with other Twitter users who are also sad.
So if you’re a sad person looking for a little happiness, start retweeting those ultra-sappy quotes you find on Twitter. The happiness might just rub off.
You can read the full study here.
via NYTimes Bits