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We crave to know it: we catch the weather report at the end of the news release, we search the Internet … But is it only to decide whether or not to take an umbrella today?
Unprecedented heat or flash floods, tornadoes or swarms of locusts – abnormal natural phenomena shake our planet more and more often and remain unpredictable. Many people grasp the weather forecast like a drowning man at straws: 8 out of 10 Europeans watch, listen to or read it every day*. However, this interest in the social sense unites us – we learn that other people experience the same emotions as we do. “Well, at least it’s still warm outside …” – “But still, I already want snow!” It is easy even for complete strangers to start a conversation about the weather: after all, the subject of conversation is safe for us, cannot provoke a conflict or cause serious disagreements with the interlocutor. In addition, discussing natural phenomena gives us the opportunity to demonstrate our awareness, and this increases (albeit just a little) our self-esteem.
Weather according to your mood
95% of survey participants on our website to the question “How does the weather affect your mood?” they answered that bad weather brings sad thoughts, while on a fine day you want to be more active. And 24% said that their mood directly depends on the weather**. Meanwhile, experts argue that this simply cannot be – if the person is healthy and does not suffer from depression.
Every day for three years, 1233 participants in the experiment, men and women, wrote down their emotions in a diary. Psychologists at the Humboldt University (Germany) compared them with the data of the German Weather Institute on the same days. As a result, it turned out that sunlight, wind or temperature do not make a person more (or less) happy. The mood does not directly depend on them ***. Belgian and Dutch psychologists clarified that our reaction to the weather is connected with its subjective perception. Analyzing the well-being of adolescents and their mothers, they found that half of the participants in the study were not affected by weather conditions at all. Every fifth person loves summer and the same number of people cannot stand it – in warm, sunny weather, 27% of teenagers and 12% of mothers had a worse mood. 9% of respondents reported that the rain calms them down and puts them in a good mood – and we are used to thinking that it makes them sad ****.
“Our mood largely depends not on the weather, but on whether we have the opportunity to lead an active lifestyle,” says social psychologist Margarita Zhamkochyan. “We are happy not because the sun is shining today, but because thanks to it, for example, we can go for a walk with friends.” Clinical psychologist Yakov Kochetkov believes that our perception is influenced by deep instincts, a legacy of the distant past. “Unless there is extreme hunger, not a single predator will hunt in bad weather, but will prefer to conserve strength at this time. It’s the same for us: good weather is a signal to be active, and bad weather is a signal to hide and wait.”
Much more noticeable on our mood is the change of seasons, more precisely, the amount of light, which is significantly reduced in autumn and winter. “On the one hand, from this, the hormone melatonin begins to be actively produced, which normalizes sleep cycles,” says Yakov Kochetkov. “But at the same time, the amount of serotonin that regulates our mood also decreases. And as a result of these two processes, it seems to us that the mood becomes more melancholy.
Strength and Vulnerability
Behind our expression “make the weather” is an unconscious admiration for the omnipotence of the elements: the one who “makes the weather” determines exactly how we will live. The vagaries of the climate remind us of our inability to subdue nature, of the vulnerability of each of us and of all mankind as a whole. No wonder ancient people everywhere deified the elements: the Egyptian god Ra personified the sun, the Scandinavian Thor owned lightning and thunder, the Greek Aeol was the lord of the winds. “We are not that far removed from our ancestors, whose life and well-being largely depended on the climate,” explains Yakov Kochetkov. “Their crops could die in a dry summer, their dwellings could burn down in a thunderstorm or be washed away by a spring flood. Our historical memory speaks in us, it keeps an anxious attitude towards the elements, which we have not been able to tame.”
We feel more confident and calm when we have clarity about what lies ahead for us in the near future. The weather forecast seems to help streamline your life. We believe that without good weather we will not be able to truly enjoy our holidays or weekends – these short periods of our freedom. But on Monday the weather can go bad – after all, you still have to go to work!
Of course, since the invention of refrigerators and air conditioners, we are less dependent on the climate, and yet it continues to influence our lives. The summer of 2010 reminded us that the idiom “to die from the heat” is not just a metaphor. One of the reasons for the passionate interest in weather forecasts is the anxiety associated with the growth of natural disasters and global climate change. Such instability gives rise to an involuntary desire to make sure that the world still does not fly into hell, that it is still the same: familiar, arranged according to the rules, predictable at least by the weather forecast for the coming days. At the same time, it is not enough for many to know only the air temperature: we want to be aware of atmospheric pressure, wind strength, humidity … Moreover, leading Internet resources (for example, Gismeteo.ru), reporting the forecast for the coming days, now give the “feel” option – then is the temperature that our body subjectively perceives.
Last year’s snow fell
Previously, the snow was whiter, the grass greener… “To enjoy the weather or be offended by it – our criteria are not clear,” notes Margarita Zhamkochyan. “We are subjective and often elevate to the absolute what we remember from childhood or youth.” “Summer, autumn, winter or spring seem especially bright at the dawn of our lives,” agrees Yakov Kochetkov. “Because both our perception of the world and the experiences of those years were brighter.” So, a little boy will remember for the rest of his life a frosty day when he and his father went skiing together. And for the girl – that May rain, under which she kissed for the first time …
And what was the weather like on that day when nothing special happened in our lives? We hardly remember it. How unlikely we will forget happy days for us – no matter what the weather is like.
*Based on Médiamétrie polls, 2009.
*** Emotion, 2008, vol. 8, № 5.
**** Emotion, 2011, vol. 11, № 6.
“Quiet! The weather is transmitted!
The passionate love of citizens for weather forecasts was very accurately described by the writer Fazil Iskander*. True, he did not explain the cause of our meteoromania. “The only feature of the Muscovites, which has remained unsolved by me until now, is their constant, mysterious interest in the weather. It used to be that you were sitting with friends for tea, listening to cozy Moscow conversations, the wall clock was ticking, the loudspeaker was babbling, but no one was listening, although for some reason they were not turned off. “Quiet! – suddenly someone shakes himself and raises his head to the loudspeaker. “They are transmitting the weather” … At first, when I heard this alarming “Hush!”, I shuddered, thinking that a war was starting or something else no less catastrophic. Then I thought that everyone was waiting for some special weather, unheard of in its pleasantness. Then I noticed that the weather, unheard of in its pleasantness, did not seem to be expected either. So what’s the deal? You might think that millions of Muscovites go hunting or field work in the morning. After all, everyone has a roof over their heads. It cannot be said that such a sizzling, debilitating interest in the weather in its constancy is due to the fact that a person needs to run to a trolleybus or subway? Agree, it would be rather strange and even unworthy of the inhabitants of the great city. There is some mystery here.”
* F. Iskander “The Way from the Varangians to the Greeks” (Time, 2008).