As it turns out, happier people tend to tweet together, as do people who are less happy, with few tweets linking the disparate groups, reports New Scientist, citing research based on millions of
tweets. "As the old adage goes, 'birds of a feather flock together' -- and it seems to be true even when tweeting," the magazine writes.
Measuring the emotional content of tweets as
reflected by the presence of positive or negative words, scientists assessed the "subjective well-being" of the users through their tweets. The result? "It turns out that Twitter users are
preferentially linked to those with whom they share a similar level of general happiness," psychologist Johan Bollen of the University of Indiana tells New Scientist.
Bollen and his
colleagues don't yet know why tweeters behave this way, although he suspects that the emotions expressed even in short tweets have an infectious quality, lifting peoples' spirits or filling them with
gloom, depending on what they read.
Read the whole story at New Scientist »