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It is cloudy outside – and everything falls out of hand, but as soon as the sun comes out, the heart is relieved … Many people believe that good weather accompanies spiritual uplift, and rain plunges us into depression. But does such a pattern really exist?
We believe that we are uplifted because the sun is shining in the morning, and, on the contrary, we fall into despondency if it rains incessantly. We are sure that the weather directly affects our mood. Attempts to experimentally verify this conventional wisdom have been made repeatedly.
The researchers asked volunteers to record their emotional state several times a day for several months, and then compared the data with weather reports for the same days. And … found no dependence!
David Watson, professor of psychology at the University of Iowa (USA), analyzed the results of twenty of the largest studies on the relationship between mood and weather, conducted since the early 1980s. It turned out that the more people participated in the experiments, the less the correlation turned out to be. In other words, psychological research refutes our intuitive conclusions: the weather and our mood are not connected in any way. What makes us believe otherwise?
Cultural stereotypes
Belief in a linear relationship between weather and state of mind comes from a distant past. The archaic view of the universe likened the inner world of man to the world of nature, and in this scheme, weather phenomena were assigned the same place that we usually assign to emotions.
So describing the sphere of feelings, today we use the same words as when describing the weather: for example, the verbs “frown” and “clear up” are equally applicable to the sky and to a person’s face.
Since ancient times, people’s lives have been regulated by the weather. “The sun played a special role,” says anthropologist Alexander Zubov. “It determined the rhythm of life, warmed it, made it possible to engage in gathering and hunting … It was a source of life’s blessings, and therefore all the great civilizations of antiquity, from the Aryans to the Aztecs, bowed before it.”
High spirits can be, for example, because in good weather we often leave the house
Today, our perceptions are still influenced by traditional attitudes and cultural stereotypes – stable and extremely simplistic ideas about what is happening. If we are happy and the sun is shining outside the window, we will most likely try to attribute our excellent mood to it. But if it’s raining outside, we just don’t pay attention to the weather.
“When a situation does not match our perceptions, we ignore it. This is how the mechanism of formation of stereotypes functions – prejudices, superstitions, social attitudes, – explains psychologist Margarita Zhamkochyan. – And vice versa, when we meet coincidences, we remember them, tell others about it.
But in fact, we may be in high spirits, for example, because in good weather we often leave the house to meet relatives and friends. This kind of social interaction always has a positive effect on us.”
Adjust to contrasts
About 60 thousand years ago, several groups of ancient people migrated from East Africa, as a result, they and their descendants populated the entire globe. “Our ancestors were forced to adapt to new living conditions,” explains anthropologist Olga Artemova. “Their bodies learned to pick up any weather signals that could affect their lives. For example, low atmospheric pressure preceded a hurricane.
In the genetic memory of subsequent generations, a sharp drop in pressure, causing a vague feeling of anxiety, was imprinted as a “premonition of a thunderstorm.” This is how our sensitivity to weather changes developed.
Mood is an emotional state that colors our lives, and it does not depend on specific circumstances. When we are in high spirits, we do not rejoice at something separately, but simply feel joy.
The mood can change several times even within one day, but its fluctuations or constant emotional background are seasonal and are primarily determined by the individual biological rhythm.
Why then does the mood change?
Most often, incomprehensible mood swings occur in autumn and winter days. But apathy, a feeling of depression are not connected with the weather, but are caused by … a lack of light. The work of the body, including the nervous system, is determined by the stability of the day-night cycle. The better the light, the more serotonin, the hormone that regulates our mood, is produced.
When it is not enough, libido and the ability to concentrate are reduced. “Scientists were able to identify a special type of nerve cells that register the amount of light perceived by the eyes and, in accordance with this, regulate the work of the internal biological clock,” says Margarita Zhamkochyan. “Morning light “starts” the work of these clocks.”
The natural biological alarm goes off if the receptors receive the right amount of light. In autumn and winter days, this becomes almost impossible.
What is weather sensitivity
Why do some of us react to the change of weather with a headache, unreasonable anxiety, exacerbation of chronic diseases? Physicist Tatyana Breus explains the phenomenon of meteosensitivity as follows: “Our body is a complex coordinated system of various rhythms – cardiac, vascular, respiratory. A sharp change in air temperature, atmospheric pressure or wind strength, increased solar activity can bring the body out of a state of stable equilibrium. And we feel emotional and physical discomfort.”
Such an acute reaction to the weather is characteristic of only 3% of the adult population. After all, weather sensitivity is a natural physiological phenomenon, thanks to which the body can adequately respond to changes in the external environment, which allows us to live in harmony with the world.
For some, the adaptation process occurs almost imperceptibly, for others it takes more time. A painful reaction to the weather is an individual feature of those who inherited a special sensitivity of the central nervous system to the activity of the sun, or those whose body is severely weakened.