Kyoto, Japan — Want to be happier? A new study that looked at millions of tweets found that it all comes down to the age-old real estate adage: “place, place, place.” Researchers say our physical location influences our emotions. A Japanese team analyzed nearly two million Twitter posts by people in London and San Francisco to see which events and places were associated with different emotional states.
In both cities, tweets from train stations, bridges, and other transit areas tend to show disgust rather than delight. Tweets from hotels and restaurants, on the other hand, indicate a higher level of joy.
Certain events also lead to certain emotions. In San Francisco, users showed the highest levels of anger, disgust, and sadness on Women’s March Day 2017. In London, users showed higher levels of fear and sadness during the two local her terrorist attacks.
On New Year’s Eve in both cities, researchers saw higher levels of joy on Twitter. The team used a computational tool called a neural network to study tweets made by more than 200,000 people in two cities. Neural networks are artificial intelligence techniques that teach computers how to process data in a way similar to the human brain.
They analyzed when people expressed anger, anticipation, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, surprise, or trust. However, researchers caution against overgeneralizing their results. One reason for this is that the study only included tweets written in English.
The team hopes that these results will help pave the way for additional in-depth studies to inform urban planning and tourism.
“Our study highlights how publicly available data sources can be used to depict fine-grained emotional signatures at detailed spatial and temporal levels across cities.” Study author Panote Silialaya of Kyoto Institute of Technology said. Statement from SWNS.
The data are published in journals pro swan.
Commuting is the worst no matter where you live
It’s no surprise that emotions are at their lowest when people are near major commuter hubs. According to her 2020 survey of 2,000 Americans who regularly drive to work, one-third of respondents said they were usually upset or stressed before arriving at the office. I understand that you are feeling In fact, 27% of Americans have a habit of complaining about their daily commute.
If you’re looking for a city to live in that often keeps you happy, StudyFinds has you covered. Honolulu, Hawaii ranks as the friendliest city in the United States, according to experts I’m here. You can see the rest of the list here.
South West News Service writer Alice Clifford contributed to this report.
