Words with friends

Some happy-related news to kick off your Friday: our language is a positive one.

English is biased towards positivity, say researchers who’ve just had their study published in the journal PLoS One. They looked at four sources (included the New York Times and Twitter) and the positive words outnumber the negative ones. Not necessarily because we’re all cheery, though. The thinking is that because we are geared to “social storytelling” as a species, happy and positive words have become more of a fixture in our language than the sad and unhappy ones.

In other words, none of us want to listen to a downer and so our language has evolved.

(Stacked books wallpaper, Anthropologie)

Leave a Comment January 13, 2012

Pursuit of happiness

Surround yourself with shiny, happy people: happiness (and sadness) is contagious much like an infection, says research from Harvard University and MIT. Their research, which involved tracking more than 1,800 people since 1948, has found that you can recover from discontent more quickly than happiness, however, it is more contagious.

2 Comments July 9, 2010