Beijing time on May 3, according to foreign media reports, the cold and humid weather can easily make people feel depressed. And scientists recently pointed out that the impact of cold weather may be more serious than we originally thought.
In one study, scientists analyzed 3.5 billion social networking site posts, including 2.4 billion Facebook and 1.1 billion tweets posted by Americans between 2009 and 2016. It found that sub-zero temperatures were more depressing than 9/11, and were equivalent to the 2015 San Bernardino shooting that killed 14 people. But the 2014 San Francisco Bay earthquake and the 2015 South Carolina floods had a bigger impact on people's moods than low temperatures.
The research was conducted by Dr Patrick Baylis of the Vancouver School of Economics and Dr Nick Obradovich of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Using related software, they analyzed billions of social software posts, looking for words that expressed positive emotions (such as "like", "nice") and negative emotions (such as "ugly", "hate"), Each post is then scored for its positive and negative sentiment.
For example, a post like "I managed to put a wine glass on my belly last night #I did it#" has a positive sentiment score of 6.7 and a negative sentiment score of 0.
The researchers then compared the tweets to the local temperature, precipitation, humidity and cloud cover at the time of posting.
Dr Obradovic said: "We have conducted the largest ever survey of the link between weather conditions and human emotions. The results show that the emotions people express are influenced by the weather outside. From Americans on social media Judging by the billions of posts posted on it, bad weather such as hot or cold weather, rain and snow, wet weather, and dark clouds can easily make people feel down."
Experts have found that people are especially vulnerable on rainy days. In addition, when the temperature reaches above 20 degrees Celsius, the higher the temperature, the more positive people's emotions; but when the temperature reaches 30 degrees Celsius, the positive emotions will not increase but decrease. People are also prone to negative emotions when the humidity reaches more than 80%, or when there is cloudy weather.
Experts acknowledge that the social media users in the analysis were self-selected and that the findings may not apply to older or less social media users. But they argue that while the research tool is "imperfect," the study can still be used to reflect people's likely emotional states.
"Weather conditions are ever-changing, so it's important to understand the impact of different weather on emotional states," said Dr. Bellis. "Our study provides a window into the relationship between the two."
(More Clicks: Independent Innovation ) (Link: http://www.chuangxin360.com )