Yes , even on Twitter , more Son — of all words — are positive than disconfirming .
A team of scientists at the University of Vermont and The MITRE Corporation localise out to prove the 1969 Pollyanna Hypothesis — which posited that human language skews overconfident , indicating a overall optimist mindset — by tracking many billions of words across 10 languages and 24 types of sources let in playscript , news outlets , social culture medium , websites , television and movie subtitle , and medicine lyrics . The researchers published their result in a newspaper call " Human Language Reveals a Universal Positivity Bias , " which appeared in the February 9 online version of theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences .
accord to UVM mathematician Peter Dodds , who co - led the study , this immense report of the " corpuscle of linguistic communication — item-by-item words " show that language itself — perhaps humanity ’s greatest technology — has a positive outlook . And , therefore , " it seems that positive social fundamental interaction " is work up into its rudimentary social organization .
To create a plate , the squad identified about 10,000 of the most frequently used parole in each of 10 languages , then had aboriginal speakers rate each word — for a totality of five million individual ratings — on a nine - breaker point graduated table of positivity . These ratings were averaged to create a score for each countersign ; in English , for model , " laugh " rated 8.50 , " nutrient " 7.44 , " truck " 5.48 , " the " 4.98 , " greed " 3.06 , and " terrorist " 1.30 .
The survey found that a Google web crawl of Spanish - linguistic communication sites had the gamy average parole happiness , and a hunting of Chinese books had the scurvy — but more significantly , all 24 source and all languages mark above a five ( a impersonal mark ) . Or , as UVM mathematician Chris Danforth , who co - head the new inquiry , cast it , " [ we ] use more felicitous words than sad tidings . "
This new inquiry contribute to the same group of scientists ' work on a global " hedonometer"—a happiness metre base on language use . They ’re presently able to traverse world - wide , and even city - specific , happiness base on Twitter linguistic communication , but go for to exposit beyond the social media political program .
