Social Interaction Fueled By Positive Words

Date: May-29-2012Positive words appear more frequently in written communication than words associated with a negative emotion, say researchers at ETH Zurich.

These findings back the the theory that social relations are improved by a positive bias in human communication.

The study, published in the new SpringerOpen journal EPJ Data Science, was conducted by David Garcia and his team from the Chair of Systems Design.

The researchers exploited a dataset on human behavior on the internet, including chat rooms, texts from blogs, and forums, among other sources, in order to determine how the emotions expressed in words relate to the word frequency and its information content. The team focused on content written in English, Spanish and German.

They found that words associated with a negative emotion appeared less frequently than those associated with a positive emotion. Although the overall emotional content of the studied words was neutral on average, the team found that the emotional content impacts the frequency of the words. According to the researchers, these findings back existing theories in that there is a positive bias in human expression in order to help social interaction.

In addition, the team found that positive words held less information than negative words. Due to the positive bias seen in human communication, words with positive emotion are more likely to be used. Negative words on the other hand, could be reserved to deliver information regarding dangerous events and urgent threats.

Written By Grace Rattue

Courtesy: Medical News Today Note: Any medical information available in this news section is not intended as a substitute for informed medical advice and you should not take any action before consulting with a health care professional.