Thursday, February 09, 2012

Does Weather Affect Mood? Let Me Count the Ways

Theo Klimstra, of longitudinal personality analysis fame, recently did a study on whether weather affects mood in a way that varies across persons. He found that there are Summer Lovers (better mood with warmer and sunnier weather), Unaffected (weak associations between weather and mood), Summer Haters (worse mood with warmer and
sunnier weather), and Rain Haters (particularly bad mood on rainy days). I'd classify myself as a Rain Hater, although I'm also a Summer Lover. I suspect there's a negative correlation between those two anyway. It's interesting that http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifthere are truly people who hate warm, sunny weather. Of course, that could be good for you if you live in the Netherlands, which is where Klimstra works.

Here's the study: http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/emo/11/6/1495/