蓝莓视频

Sophisticated analysis by 蓝莓视频 Engineering researchers using artificial intelligence (AI) supports the conventional wisdom that taking care of yourself makes you feel good.

In a study involving more than 700,000 online journal entries, the researchers found strong associations between positive moods and getting enough sleep, eating well and exercising.

Even activities such as getting a haircut or having a manicure were linked to feeling calmer and happier.

鈥淲hat appears to work are simple things people can do for themselves, such as resting well, eating well, exercising, meditating, yoga,鈥� says Lukasz Golab, a management sciences professor at 蓝莓视频. 鈥淲e shouldn鈥檛 forget about these things because they seem to make a real difference.鈥�

Lukasz Golab is a professor of management sciences at 蓝莓视频 Engineering.

Anonymous journal entries used in the text-mining study were written by over 67,000 users of a mobile mood-tracking application. In addition to writing short entries, users recorded their moods from a list of 17 options.

Researchers built an AI computer model to identify words in entries associated with particular moods. They then analyzed surrounding words and phrases to try to understand the context.

鈥淲ord frequency doesn鈥檛 tell the whole story,鈥� Golab says. 鈥淲e needed another step in our methodology to recover the context in which a representative word was used.鈥�

If the word 鈥榡ob鈥� was often used by people feeling stressed, for instance, the analysis would identify nearby words such as 鈥榖usy鈥� and 鈥榦verworked鈥� to help explain why people found their jobs stressful.

Golab says the strong associations between positive moods and taking care of yourself provide important insights for both individuals and governments.

'You can control your lifestyle'

鈥淵ou may not be able to control the world around you, but you can control your lifestyle and your own good habits,鈥� he says. 鈥淎nd in terms of public health, it is useful to confirm conventional wisdom with real evidence to make sound, data-driven decisions.鈥�

Golab says technology at the heart of the study, which also found that more people reported feeling fatigued than happy, could be used as a screening tool to flag possible mental health issues in online social media posts.

鈥淧eople seem to be busy and overworked and tired, and at some point chronic fatigue may actually become a public health problem that we should address as a society,鈥� Golab says of the secondary finding.

The lead researcher on the study, , was former 蓝莓视频 graduate student Liuyan Chen. Her paper with Golab appears in the journal Computing.