Life satisfaction among microblog users:an analysis on linguistic and behavior features

Objective To analyze differences and characteristics in linguistic content and behaviors among the microblog users with different life satisfaction level.Methods The participants were recruited from active microblog users via Sina microblog.The information on demography,life satisfaction level,and online traces of the participants were collected with web crawler.We calculated the mean(M) and standard deviation(SD) of life satisfaction score and M±SD value was adopted as the threshold to assign the participants into a high(325) and low(303) satisfaction group.Then the disparities in the characteristics between the two groups were assessed.Results The overall average life satisfaction score was 13.6±9.8 for all the participants;the average score was 22.8±2.7 for the participants of high satisfaction group and 3.7±2.0 for those of low satisfaction group,with a significant difference(P<0.001).The results of non-parametric test showed that compared to those of low satisfaction group,the participants of high satisfaction group used following words more frequently(mean frequency;quartile range of the frequencies):particular personal pronoun(3.92 vs.3.55;2.67 vs.2.39),first-person singular pronoun(2.04 vs.1.91;1.29 vs.1.02),first-person plural pronoun(0.06 vs.0.00;0.00 vs.0.00),relative term(9.21 vs.8.71;7.55 vs.7.23),special word(3.91 vs.3.59;3.07 vs.2.84),words for money(0.42 vs.0.28;0.00 vs.0.00)(all P<0.05);but they used exclusive words less frequently(1.76 vs.1.98;1.13 vs.1.22)(P<0.05).For the behavior features,the participants of high life satisfaction group had a higher ratio of mutual follower versus following(mean value;quartile range of the values)(0.42 vs.0.35;0.23 vs.0.19),a greater number of mutual followers(103 vs.86; 55 vs.46),a greater number of followers(463 vs.415; 309 vs.221),and a high ratio of verification(0.00 vs.0.00; 0.20 vs.0.00) compared with those of participants of low life satisfaction group(all P<0.05).Conclusion There are significant differences in some online linguistic and behavior features between the microblog users with high and low life satisfaction.