What factors affect your mood throughout the day?

Are "good night Twitter!" messages before bedtime more sarcastic and disgruntled than the "good morning Twitter!" tweets posted at the beginning of the day?

Cornell University researchers used a text-analysis program called the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count to analyze 509 million tweets and "gauge the positive affect (enthusiasm, delight, activeness, alertness, etc.) or negative affect (distress, fear, anger, guilt, disgust, etc.) expressed by the text," according to a news release about the study.

The researchers found "people tend to be more positive on weekends and early in the morning. In general, individuals awaken in a good mood that slowly deteriorates as the day progresses, which is consistent with the effects of sleep and circadian rhythms."

There are limitations to using Twitter for studies, said the researchers, who noted "that unlike laboratory studies, we have little data on conditions that are known to influence mood, including demographic and occupational backgrounds that may influence when and how much people sleep, the level and timing of environmental stress, susceptibility to affective contagion, and access to social support."

What factors affect your mood throughout the day? Are you typically in a better mood in the morning or the evening? Do you think Twitter is a useful gauge of people's moods? Let us know in the comments below.



(This survey is not scientific. Results are based on readers' responses.)