Chicago - If you are not a morning person, you will find this hard to believe because breakfast is our happiest time of the day.
Analysis of more than half a billion Twitter messages showed that people from all over the world wake up in a good mood but become grumpier by the hour. However, we do cheer up in the evening.
By counting how often various words linked to happiness cropped up in Twitter posts, researchers at Cornell University also showed, not surprisingly, that we are happier at the weekend. This suggests that the stresses and strains of work are getting us down during the week.
But the researchers say sleep and our body’s natural rhythms also play a big role. At weekends, spirits are highest a bit later in the morning – likely because we get up later.
“We found people are happiest around breakfast time and it’s all downhill from there,” researcher Michael Macy told the annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
“It wasn’t about work because we found the same pattern on the weekend but it was delayed by about an hour and half.”
The professor thinks we start the day happy because we are refreshed by sleep. And that lift at the weekend comes from rising at the time nature intended, rather than being jolted to life by an alarm.
The need for sleep could also help explain why we use more and more negative words as the day goes on. - Daily Mail