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Discovering Psychological and Health Insights from Social Media Language
Wednesday, February 11, 2015, 11:00 am-12:00 pm Calendar
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Abstract

What can language reveal about who we are? Traditionally, large-scale investigations of psychological and health variables are limited in scale and concept. Measurement options (e.g. phone surveys or household visits) are expensive to administer with high spatial and temporal resolution. Further, they are conceptually restricted to preconceived hypotheses (i.e. questions one decides to survey). Language analysis over social media offers a practical modern approach for population-level data-driven human assessment. Here, I will discuss multidisciplinary work on using language analyses to better understand who we are --- our personalities, health, and well-being. I will show that many psychological and health factors can be measured quite well via social media language. For example, personality from Facebook language is just above friends’ accuracy, and county-level tweets are more predictive of heart disease than standard demographic and socioeconomic factors. I will then demonstrate how one can go beyond prediction and gain data-driven insight into such factors. For example, conscientious people don’t just talk about planning and work but also about relaxation, and counties high in life satisfaction don’t just talk more about money but also charities and donations.

Bio

Andy Schwartz is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Computer & Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania and will begin as Assistant Professor at Stony Brook University (SUNY) in the Fall of 2015. His interdisciplinary research utilizes natural language processing and machine learning techniques to discover health and psychological insights through social media. He received his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Central Florida in 2011. He is currently the Lead Research Scientist for the World Well-Being Project, a team of computer- and social-scientists developing techniques to measure psychological and medical well-being based on social media. 

This talk is organized by Jimmy Lin