Splicetoday

Pop Culture
Nov 07, 2008, 09:55AM

Stop Blaming the Weather

Unfortunately, one of the world's oldest excuses for shitty moods is wrong.

Sigh:

So how come many of us are convinced the weather affects mood? Denissen et al. (2008) suggest that we may be responding to a culturally transmitted idea that weather affects mood. Effectively we think the weather has significant effects on our mood because everyone else thinks and says it does.

We may also pay a disproportionate amount of attention to a very small number of people who really do have what has become known as Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). These people report that their moods are very strongly associated with the weather. While it might be assumed that this connection is the same for everyone: winter = sad, summer = happy, the data collected by Denissen et al. (2008) doesn't support this. Instead it suggests there are just as many people with SAD who become sadder in the summer and cheer up in the winter. But for the vast majority of us there is no effect.

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