Ever wondered whether people were happier in the past? We now have a much better idea, thanks to a new technique that involves analyzing the sentiment behind the words used in millions of pieces of text over the last 200 years. (And the answer is: no.)
The study: A team of researchers, led by Thomas Hills at the University of Warwick, analyzed 8 million books and 65 million newspaper articles published between 1820 and 2009. They assigned happiness scores to thousands of words in different languages and then calculated the relative proportion of positive and negative language for the four different countries. These scores were used to create historical happiness indices for the UK, the US, Germany, and Italy.
The findings: They aren’t very surprising (both world wars made people unhappy, for example). The low point of happiness in the US was around the time of the Fall of Saigon in 1975.
The big picture: New ways to measure well-being and happiness could help to inform national policies. The UK’s statistics authority, for example, has been measuring levels of national well-being since 2010. Using written material to provide historical context could prove invaluable to the fledgling discipline. Read the full story here.
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