推特：全球情绪风向标

译者 asheluvor

If you start the day feeling positive but feel yourself growing increasingly glum as it slugs along, you're not alone. A new study using Twitter to track daily, global mood swings found that people tend to have two peaks, happiness-wise: early in the morning and then again around midnight.

      如果你每天清晨精神抖擞，信心倍增，但日不上三杆就行动迟缓，精神萎靡，嗯，这就对了。一项利用推特网观测情绪的研究发现，一天之中人的情绪往往有两个高峰，清晨和午夜。

Sociologists at Cornell University tracked more than half a billion tweets from more than 2 million Twitter users across the globe over two years. Relying on language-monitoring software, they found that people tend to be happiest relatively early in the morning, but that good mood deteriorates as the day continues. The world's tweeters are then most positive again sometime around midnight."Everybody we told about this has had the same reaction: 'That's obvious. People go to work, they get stressed -- of course their mood deteriorates,'" Michael Macy, Ph.D., a professor of sociology at Cornell and one of the study's authors, told HuffPost. "It turns out, that's not true."

        两年来，康奈尔大学的社会学家记录了两百万推特儿的五亿多条状态。借助语言监测软件，他们发现人们的积极情绪在早上到达峰值，随后一路下挫。午夜，南瓜马车的幸福感又姗姗而至。研究发起人之一，康奈尔大学社会学教授迈克尔说：“每一个知道这个研究结果的人都觉得，这不很平常吗。人们上班了，压抑了，自然不那么畅快了。但其实不是这么回事儿。”

The researchers found that the mood swing pattern remained largely the same on the weekends, when most people aren't heading into the office. This, they argue, emphasizes the important role of sleep and natural circadian rhythms on determining daily highs and lows -- not just work. As the Mayo Clinic explains, everyone has an internal clock that impacts body temperature, appetite, hormonal changes and sleep cycles.

        研究人员发现，周末时大多数人都不工作，情绪曲线也和平日一样。他们认为这个现象证明了睡眠和生理节奏对情绪同样有明显影响，工作并不是唯一因素。梅奥诊疗所解释道，每个人都有自己的生物钟，调节体温，食欲，荷尔蒙和睡眠周期。

Indeed, on weekends -- when more individuals are likely to awake according to their own internal clock and not just when their alarm clock fires off -- people were more positive overall and had what the researchers dub lower "negative affect," i.e. feelings of distress, fear, anger, guilt and disgust. The researchers also found that the observed morning happiness spike came about two hours later, presumably because people were sleeping in.

       毕竟是周末，很多人情愿丢掉闹钟，一觉闷到自然醒，神清气爽自是不在话下。这时人们受负面情绪（例如压力，恐惧，愤怒，负罪感以及厌恶感）影响最小。人们晨间的情绪高峰也推迟了两小时，多半因为起床时间延后了。

Macy said the findings suggest there are many factors, including biological circadian rhythms and work, that all interact to impact mood.According to study co-author Scott Golder, Twitter provided them with a unique platform with which to look at these issues of mood swings across the globe."Previous studies done in lab or clinical settings have used small samples of people and they were typically very homogeneous," he said. "What was most surprising here was how consistent this pattern was across 84 countries."

       迈克尔认为很多因素会相互作用，对情绪造成影响，生物钟和工作是其中两例。合作人斯科特说，推特为他们搭建了一个独特的平台，便于在全球范围内研究情绪波动问题。“以前研究是在实验室或诊疗所里完成的，样本人数比较少，结果分布也很平均”，斯科特介绍道，“但夸张的是，现在的数据来自84个国家，结果还是几乎一样！”