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While early mornings may be associated with pathological grumpiness for many, the first part of the day is also linked with some of the most positive tweets, according to new research.

An analysis of tweets from 2.4 million people in 84 countries reveals that people on Twitter are the most positive in the morning and at weekends.

Researchers from Cornell University analysed more than 500 million English-language tweets using a computer program to search for words indicating a positive mood - happy, enthusiastic, brilliant - or a negative mood - sad, anxious, fear.

Positive attitude peaks early in the morning, and again near midnight, but starts to dip midmorning before rising again in the evening.

Tweeters also display a midday dip at weekends, indicating that the moodiness is not a result of work stress, but the result of the so-called circadian rhythms that signal when it is time to sleep and when to wake, claim Scott Golder, a Cornell graduate student and Cornell sociologist Michael Macy. The study appears in today's edition of the journal Science.

The researchers also examined tweets in the United Arab Emirates, where Friday and Saturday are considered the weekend instead of the western Saturday and Sunday. They found the same daily pattern, even though the workday tends to begin earlier there than in the west, and the same weekend pattern.

Previous research has linked the biological clock and mood, but was based mostly on small studies of American college students. There are cautions about studying tweets, too: Their authors tend to be younger than the general population and may be more affluent, better educated and different in yet-to-be-discovered ways.

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