ORIGINAL ARTICLES

Emotional Expression Patterns in Weibo Posts by Individuals with ADHD Traits

  • LIU Xingyu ,
  • YU Meng
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  • 1Department of Psychology, School of Public Health, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou 510515, China;
    2Department of Psychiatry, Zhujiang Hospital, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou 510282, China
* YU Meng, yumengbnu@163.com

Online published: 2025-12-10

Abstract

Objective: This study employs Weibo text analysis to investigate the emotional characteristics and expression patterns of individuals with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) traits within the context of Weibo posts.
Methods: ADHD-related posts were collected from Weibo from 2022 to 2025 using a web crawler. Following data cleaning with R, manual screening was conducted based on specific criteria to identify: (1) posts from suspected ADHD individuals, and (2) first-person narratives containing emotional expressions. A final dataset of 207 eligible posts (containing 1 116 emotional clauses) was analyzed. Emotional categorization was performed using the Dalian University of Technology Sentiment Lexicon. The Jaccard coefficient and Markov chain analysis were applied to examine the patterns of emotional co-occurrence and dynamic transitions.
Results: The analysis revealed: (1) frequent co-occurrence of contradictory emotions (e.g., praise-blame, Jaccard coefficient=0.58), reflecting conflicts in daily self-evaluation and indicating deeper self-identity issues; (2) statistics reveal high-probability emotional transition pathways (e.g., annoyance → blame, 90.9%).
Conclusion: Individuals with suspected ADHD demonstrate a unique profile of contradictory emotional expression on social media. The characteristics of their emotional dynamics may provide precise targets for digital health interventions.

Cite this article

LIU Xingyu , YU Meng . Emotional Expression Patterns in Weibo Posts by Individuals with ADHD Traits[J]. Psychological Communications, 2025 , 8(3) : 233 -241 . DOI: 10.12100/j.issn.2096-5494.225032

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