• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, March 3, 2015

The rise of social media has given researchers a vast new pool of data to draw on for studies spanning economics, sociology, and psychology, to name just a few disciplines. Predictably some academics have pushed back on the practice, with a study published in Science last year titled “Social Media for Large Studies of Behavior” that questions the accuracy of some social media data and urges further refinements in data gathering and analysis. 

Despite these reservations, social media is in fact yielding real insights into human psychology, according to a number of presentations at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology’s annual convention in Long Beach. According to PsychCentral.com, researchers believe that detailed new approaches in areas like language analysis and computer science are enabling better analysis and more accurate results.

For example, one study using “open-vocabulary” analysis discovered marked differences in the way people employ language, based in part on their gender and age; men were more likely to use the possessive “my” with “wife” or girlfriend” than women referring to their “husband” or “boyfriend.” Proving that you can take the man out of the cave, but…

Another study using predictive algorithms and automated language analysis showed that Facebook users’ choice of words accurately predict their personality traits, as well as related measures including their number of friends and political attitudes. Similarly, a third study demonstrated that language used on Facebook can be correlated with traits like extroversion and emotional stability. Among other things, it found that people with neurotic traits were more likely to use words like sadness, loneliness, fear, and pain. 

In one intriguing study, psychologists were able to correlate tweets with heart disease prevalence. PsychCentral.com quoted lead author Johannes Eichstaedt, who asserted: “Language associated with anger, negative emotions, hostility, and disengagement within a community was associated with increased rates of heart disease.” He noted that Twitter users aren’t themselves more at risk for heart disease, but their mental state reflects the overall level of stress and emotional tenor of the community they live in.