Background: In recent years, 'hedonometrics' has become an
increasingly valuable scientific method for studying human behavior, and specifically gauging human happiness.
This idea
has been around since the 1880s, when Francis
Edgeworth spoke of the "ideally perfect instrument, a psychophysical machine,
continually registering the height of pleasure experienced by an individual". More recently, it has been used to
measure population level happiness using messages posted online. For more inforation about the instrument used to measure sentiment, please visit the Hedonometer website. This project is a collaboration with the Computational Story Lab. Website designed by Peter
Larsen, with assistance and guidance from Chris
Danforth, Peter Dodds, Andy Reagan, and Morgan Frank.
Methods:
Individuals using a mobile device application may opt-in to geolocate their message, in which case the
exact latitude and longitude of the mobile phone is reported. The accuracy of this information is governed by the
precision of the GPS instrument embedded in the phone, which can vary depending on the surrounding topography. As
a result of these factors, we are able to approximately place each geolocated message inside a 10 meter circle on
the surface of the Earth, within which the tweet was sent. Roughly 1% of the status updates received through
Twitter's public API
gardenhose feed are geolocated, resulting in a total of 37 million messages in 2011, collectively representing
more than 180,000 English-speaking people.
Only the geolocated tweets authored within 100 meters of an establishment were included. The geographic
coordinates of all businesses in the continental U.S. were identified with a database of phone numbers and addresses, purchased from Yellow Page City Inc.
Publications: The instrument we use to measure happiness has been developed and described in a
series of scientific papers including:
Bonus: As an additional example application of the technique explored in this
website, we
report here an interesting result. We collected tweets from individuals who geolocated a message from within
McDonalds in the year 2011. For these individuals, we also collected messages they authored in the week prior and subsequent to their visit to the fast food restaurant. In the image below, we find that their expressed sentiment is at a minimum roughly 24 hours prior to their indulgence. Happiness increases thereafter for the rest of the week!
