JackpotCity Casino on Twitter, Time and Moods

Feeling annoyed? Then it might be lunchtime on Wednesday. Actually, even just thinking about lunchtime on Wednesday just made me feel slightly annoyed… How about you? Do certain times of the day, or days of the week, affect your mood…? Several studies have shown that they probably do. While Mondays have always had a bad reputation, research shows that generally, our mood tends to decline on Sunday afternoon and pick up again later in the week on Thursday afternoon. Mondays are even associated with several cardiovascular events, like high blood pressure, heart attacks and stroke.

Twitter has become a useful tool for behavioural researchers. In recent years, Twitter data has been used to study many mood-related topics (emotional contagion, changes in public opinion, monitor public health concerns) and measure population mood before, during and after a natural disaster. It has even been used to predict changes in the stock market and to estimate the duration of positive and negative emotions after an emotion is labelled (i.e. once a feeling has been put into words).

Incidentally, it turns out that putting an emotion into words reduces the emotion’s intensity over time. In other words, expressing your emotions in words, saying “I feel…”, “I’m feeling…” etc., diminishes the intensity and duration of the feeling. That’s good to know if you’re feeling sad. It also explains why some people don’t want to “jinx” positive feelings by putting a label on them!

If you enjoy playing online pokies at JackpotCity, we recommend playing our casino games on the weekend to have the best experience possible! Here’s why…

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Expressing our emotions in tweets – the weekly pattern

Social media networks like Twitter have given scientists new tools to investigate human behaviour and emotional patterns. A recent study called, “Twitter, Time and Emotions”, published in May 2021 by Eric Mayor and Lucas M. Biettihas analysed 7 million self-referencing tweets and 18 million other tweets, searching for general mood patterns during the day and the week. The results showed that the mood expressed by Twitter users tends to follow fixed patterns. No one will be surprised to learn: Sunday afternoon sees a general mood decline, only finding a new upswing come Thursday afternoon.

However, the researchers pointed out that “regular variations in mood, cognition and behaviour” follow a seven-day rhythm. This is probably “associated with cultural traditions […] and the cultural distinction between weekdays and weekends in modern societies”; however, some scientists have suggested these patterns could have a biological origin. But this seems unlikely: a separate study in 2017 looked at the mood of students during the academic year and the holidays and found that when the distinction between the workweek and weekend was non-existent, or less marked, mood followed more of a circasemilunar pattern (12-day cycle). While during the academic year it followed a 7-day pattern, as reflected in the Twitter study. This would support the idea that seven-day patterns in mood are culturally conditioned.

The researchers state that our seven-day workweek may have evolved to “enable humans to resynchronise their circadian rhythms after increasing residual desynchronisation due to the accumulation of chemical substances in the body over the workweek”. In other words, if a human being or an animal has to work for five or six days each week, they will naturally need a couple of days’ rest at the end; and they will start to feel grumpy and tired just thinking about having to do it all over again. We can assume the tiredness will peak midweek. This is the moment when you are most likely to send out a grouchy tweet, rather than an ecstatic one.

Daily patterns expressed in tweets

When the researchers looked at Twitter patterns over a 24-hour day, they found that people were most positive from 2 pm until 11 pm. During this time, people used the words “sweet”, “love” and “nice” more often. After ten in the morning, people were at their most negative. Hangry?

The researchers noted, “we think the positive emotions between 2 pm and 11 pm may be due to people getting reenergised from what they’ve eaten, or that they start to think about the evening approaching”. However, for certain people, this reenergising effect led to more powerful negative emotions too, which Mayor says creates a complex picture that requires further examination. People experience both more powerful positive and negative emotions from 2 pm to 11 pm. Mayor adds, “we also see an increase in positive emotions when people get up in the morning before they go to work. But this positive trend ends around 10 am”.

Circadian (or daily) rhythms are probably the result of environmental changes and light and dark cycles. Body temperature also peaks during the day and reaches its lowest at night, which controls phases of higher activity and rest periods. Circadian rhythms are marked by spikes in melatonin and cortisol levels.

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Four-day workweek in NZ

Would having a four-day workweek in New Zealand affect the way our mood changes over the week? It would be interesting to see whether a weekend starting on Friday would mean general mood lifted on Wednesday afternoon instead of Thursday afternoon. If Jacinda Ardern’s idea of a four-day workweek ever becomes a reality we will be able to answer the question. My own theory is that the general mood will lift on Wednesday. I doubt that many people will disagree.

Best time to play online casino

What this Twitter research tells us is that we are all generally happier on the weekend or at home in the evening. Our emotions are stronger in the evening too, both positive and negative. This is probably because we have more time to think about how we’re feeling and express it on Twitter too. The weekend and early evening are the best time to play online casino games because that’s when we have the most energy. That’s when you’re more likely to have more energy to play games well, enjoy them more and make better strategic choices. We could make this number eleven on our list of ways to stay focused at the poker table. Happy playing!

July 22 2021