WEBVTT - Do Rainy Days Make Us Sad? 0:00:01.920 --> 0:00:06.520 Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of I Heart Radio, Hey 0:00:06.559 --> 0:00:11.280 brain Stuff, Lauren Folke bomb here. Our collective imagination has 0:00:11.320 --> 0:00:16.319 a powerful association between rainfall and melancholy. We've come to 0:00:16.360 --> 0:00:20.120 assume that dark, cloudy skies and the drumbeat of raindrops 0:00:20.160 --> 0:00:23.800 on our windows make people feel sad and forlorn. Are 0:00:23.920 --> 0:00:26.760 only consolation being that the sun will come out again. 0:00:27.960 --> 0:00:32.040 But do rainy days really get us down? Science says 0:00:32.280 --> 0:00:37.000 yes and no. Research indicates that weather doesn't significantly affect 0:00:37.040 --> 0:00:40.440 mood for most people, although one study has suggested that 0:00:40.560 --> 0:00:44.720 a minority may indeed feel worse when it rains. We 0:00:44.800 --> 0:00:48.000 spoke by email with David Watson, the Andrew J. McKenna 0:00:48.080 --> 0:00:50.960 Family Professor of psychology at the University of Notre Dame 0:00:51.280 --> 0:00:54.720 and author of the book Mood and Temperament, which describes 0:00:54.800 --> 0:00:58.600 his own research on rainfall and mood. He said, I 0:00:58.640 --> 0:01:01.720 think this popular belief, which I shared to some extent 0:01:01.880 --> 0:01:05.200 despite my own work in this area, represents what psychologists 0:01:05.280 --> 0:01:09.320 call a confirmation bias. For example, if I'm feeling down 0:01:09.400 --> 0:01:12.200 and look outside and see it raining, I may conclude 0:01:12.200 --> 0:01:15.760 that I'm feeling gloomy because it's raining. However, if I'm 0:01:15.760 --> 0:01:18.600 feeling down and look outside and see bright sunshine, I 0:01:18.720 --> 0:01:21.080 quickly conclude that it has nothing to do with the weather. 0:01:21.840 --> 0:01:24.520 So we tend to notice and remember those events that 0:01:24.560 --> 0:01:29.679 are consistent with our beliefs and expectations. In one study, 0:01:29.720 --> 0:01:33.600 for example, Watson and a colleague followed eighteen Japanese college 0:01:33.600 --> 0:01:36.920 students over a three month period in nineteen eighty, assessing 0:01:36.959 --> 0:01:40.199 their daily moods and correlating the ratings with weather summaries. 0:01:40.959 --> 0:01:44.440 To the researchers surprise, their analyzes of the data all 0:01:44.480 --> 0:01:47.360 demonstrated that the student's mood was unrelated to the weather. 0:01:48.120 --> 0:01:51.560 Watson subsequently gathered data from four hundred and seventy eight 0:01:51.600 --> 0:01:54.920 college students in Texas during various periods during the mid 0:01:54.960 --> 0:01:58.240 to late eighties and early nineties, which he again compared 0:01:58.280 --> 0:02:02.480 to weather records. The result essentially was the same. Even 0:02:02.520 --> 0:02:04.520 on days when it rained an inch or more about 0:02:04.560 --> 0:02:07.120 twenty five million liters and there was no more than 0:02:07.200 --> 0:02:11.000 ten percent possible sunshine, there seemed to be no significant 0:02:11.040 --> 0:02:16.120 effect on mood. Watson said, my research tried to tease 0:02:16.160 --> 0:02:19.680 apart various potential factors, such as the presence versus absence 0:02:19.680 --> 0:02:24.400 of rain and daylight versus cloudiness. These variables are confounded 0:02:24.400 --> 0:02:27.480 as it rarely rains when the sky is sunny. I 0:02:27.560 --> 0:02:31.440 really could not find much evidence that anything influenced people's mood. 0:02:32.160 --> 0:02:35.080 When I started this research, I was very concerned about 0:02:35.080 --> 0:02:38.679 being able to locate the source of any effects. For instance, 0:02:38.760 --> 0:02:41.400 if people feel blue on a rainy day, it could 0:02:41.400 --> 0:02:45.079 be the precipitation or the cloudiness, or the barometric pressure, 0:02:45.440 --> 0:02:48.000 or the fact that the rain restricts their activities and 0:02:48.120 --> 0:02:51.800 or makes them more stressful or less pleasant. However, I 0:02:51.919 --> 0:02:55.760 really found no evidence that people felt sad on rainy days, 0:02:55.840 --> 0:02:59.520 so none of these variables seems to be crucially important. 0:03:00.040 --> 0:03:04.880 Other studies seemed consistent with Watson's findings that whether isn't 0:03:04.919 --> 0:03:08.240 that potent of an influence on mood, though two studies 0:03:08.280 --> 0:03:11.000 suggest that rain may have some effect on a minority 0:03:11.040 --> 0:03:15.160 of individuals. A study by Bulgarian researchers published in twenty 0:03:15.160 --> 0:03:18.520 eleven in Advances in Science and Research found a negative 0:03:18.560 --> 0:03:22.240 effect on emotion when the skies suddenly changed to cloudy, 0:03:22.320 --> 0:03:26.640 but the impact varied. Emotionally stable people were more resistant 0:03:26.680 --> 0:03:29.240 to the influence of weather changes, while those who were 0:03:29.240 --> 0:03:33.960 emotionally unstable were more strongly dependent upon them. Another study 0:03:34.040 --> 0:03:36.760 of four hundred and ninety seven Dutch adolescence in their mothers, 0:03:37.040 --> 0:03:40.000 published in twenty eleven in the journal Emotion, found that 0:03:40.040 --> 0:03:43.040 forty seven point eight percent of the subjects were unaffected 0:03:43.040 --> 0:03:46.400 by the weather, that sixteen point eight percent were summer 0:03:46.440 --> 0:03:50.520 lovers who reacted positively to warm, sunny weather, that twenty 0:03:50.560 --> 0:03:54.240 six point eight percent were summer haters, and that eight 0:03:54.280 --> 0:03:58.120 point seven percent were rain haters, who were measurably angrier 0:03:58.200 --> 0:04:02.600 and less happy on days with more our precipitation. We 0:04:02.680 --> 0:04:05.160 also spoke by email with the lead author of the study, 0:04:05.240 --> 0:04:08.680 Theo Klimstra, an associate professor in the Department of Developmental 0:04:08.680 --> 0:04:12.880 Psychology at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. He said the 0:04:12.960 --> 0:04:16.320 group of rain haters was pretty small, but the summer 0:04:16.400 --> 0:04:19.760 lovers didn't like the rain either, so the total group 0:04:19.800 --> 0:04:22.960 of people who didn't like the rain was about of 0:04:23.000 --> 0:04:26.200 the sample. The main difference between the rain haters and 0:04:26.400 --> 0:04:29.400 summer lovers was that the rain haters didn't react as 0:04:29.400 --> 0:04:32.000 strongly to a lack of sun and low temperature as 0:04:32.040 --> 0:04:35.400 the summer lovers did, whereas summer lovers didn't react as 0:04:35.440 --> 0:04:39.520 strongly to the rain as the rain haters did. Klimstra 0:04:39.600 --> 0:04:43.400 said it was surprising that about the subjects weren't negatively 0:04:43.440 --> 0:04:47.760 affected by the rain. Quote. We examined whether the Big 0:04:47.800 --> 0:04:53.400 five traits openness, conscientiousness, extra version, agreeableness, and neuroticism were 0:04:53.440 --> 0:04:56.479 related to our weather types, but that wasn't the case. 0:04:57.080 --> 0:05:00.160 The most likely explanation is that people are just us 0:05:00.200 --> 0:05:08.320 bothered by rain than we like to believe. Today's episode 0:05:08.320 --> 0:05:10.839 was written by Patrick J. Tiger and produced by Tyler Clang. 0:05:11.240 --> 0:05:12.960 For more in this and lots of other topics, visit 0:05:13.000 --> 0:05:15.640 how stuffworks dot com. Brain Stuff is production of by 0:05:15.640 --> 0:05:18.280 Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit 0:05:18.320 --> 0:05:20.920 the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you 0:05:20.920 --> 0:05:22.120 listen to your favorite shows.