Where does happiness go: looking at happiness through big data

What is happiness? This is what everyone thinks about and has its own understanding.

March 20, the Second International Day of Happiness. The United Nations will hold a celebration of Happiness Day, formally inviting Professor Peng, director of the Department of Psychology of Tsinghua University and an advocate of the Chinese positive psychology movement, as the only guest in Asia to deliver a speech on "China's happiness status and the contribution of China's happiness research".

2011 Tsinghua University set up a center for research on Positive psychology. 2013, Tsinghua University, the establishment of behavior and large data laboratory, although the United States and other countries have begun to use large data this new method of happiness, but the use of large data to derive the whole country's happiness index, "Tsinghua University Happiness China Index" is the first time in the world.

The laboratory has advanced international cooperation with the research team of Martin Seligman, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and former president of the American Psychological Council (APA), and has made an original and international frontier in the field of large data research on happiness.

The action effect of happiness

First of all, Professor Peng and his team built a set of Chinese psychological lexicon to measure happiness according to the Chinese cultural and psychological characteristics, combining the classical theory of happiness science. In addition to the traditional dimensions of positive emotion, meaning, devotion, relationship and achievement, the dimension of this thesaurus also adds the dimension of the event. Compared to the West, this is the Chinese more unique way of expressing happiness. That is, we may in some way be "doing better than words", we do not use words to express our happiness, but we will use action to express our happiness. This new dimension of behavior is also based on a series of studies by Professor Peng's research team on Chinese happiness events. At the same time, Chinese happiness expression is often reflected by the recent expressions that are popular in social media.

The happiness index has an inflection point?

Mayes, an American economist, Myers an "inflection point theory" after analyzing the relationship between world income per capita and happiness in the 1991. That is, there is an inflection point between a person's wealth and their happiness: in poor countries, wealth has a greater impact on happiness, but when a country's per capita income exceeds a certain level, the correlation between wealth and national well-being disappears, and the impact of indicators such as human rights and social equality begins to grow.

In order to accurately describe the relationship between happiness and economics, the team plotted the relationship between the city's happiness index and GDP per capita, and found that the relationship was not linear: in poorer regions, happiness rose rapidly as the economy developed, but there was a turning point in the 3000 US dollar (20,000 yuan) per capita GDP. , when GDP per capita exceeds this line, happiness will not rise rapidly with the development of the economy. This also gives us a revelation: After a certain level of economic development, we can no longer take economic development as the sole goal, but must start to consider other factors that can improve people's happiness.

The time effect of happiness

Another interesting study is the happy time effect on social media. Professor Peng and his team have charted the happiness of the Year 2013 and its various dimensions based on Sina Weibo's annual data. Research has found that the impact of a wide range of negative events will have some impact on the happiness index on Weibo, such as the March 5 baby-stealing, the Boston Marathon bombing of April 16, and the Yaan earthquake in April 20. And some positive events, but also in social media to trigger happiness positive fluctuations, such as the November 10 Guangzhou Evergrande Championship. Some of these big events also have different effects on the various dimensions of happiness, such as the Yaan earthquake. It creates a positive emotional trough, but at the same time it forms the peak of relationship and meaning dimensions. This is the first time psychologists have demonstrated a massive psychological synchronization effect at a billionaire level.

The holiday effect of happiness

In the trend chart, Professor Peng and his team found the psychological effects of the festival. The mood change of netizens is not like people's intuition thinks of the holiday on happiness, the influence of the festival to the mood not only is brought by the holiday, or is brought by the meaning of the festival itself. Similar to the Spring Festival, mid-Autumn Festival and other historical precipitation and psychological traditions of the festival brings people more happiness than New Year's Day, National Day and other modern festivals more; At the same time, those who have psychological significance of unofficial festivals, such as Valentine's Day, Thanksgiving Day, even if there is no holiday, will also form a peak of the map; some of the less psychological festivals, such as 51, Although the holiday, the impact on people's happiness is not the same as the previous festival big. This shows that the holiday brings happiness, is by the holiday and social psychological value together brought, in some festivals, the social psychological significance of the well-being even more than the holiday generated happiness. This also gives us a revelation: for festivals, not only from the toil, transportation and other economic perspectives to consider, but also from the psychological, meaning and other angles to consider.

The weekly effect of happiness

Peng and his team have studied the daily happiness of people during the week, and found that the Chinese were the most happy day of the week in the Saturday with the highest positive emotions and negative emotions, which is consistent with the results of a small scale questionnaire survey of psychologists, which is also in line with people's intuitive experience.

Professor Peng that talking about happiness and studying happiness has a positive effect. His team found that when people talk about happiness themselves, they show higher levels of happiness, and happiness can infect others and improve the well-being of the whole society. At the same time, it is of great significance to study the positive psychology of human being, such as happiness, morals, culture, innovation and so on. He led the Department of Psychology at Tsinghua University, a useful attempt in this regard, proving that these problems with human survival can be studied in the scientific way of large data.