A Warm Heart and a Clear Head

Abstract

Prior studies on the association between weather and psychological changes have produced mixed results. In part, this inconsistency may be because weather's psychological effects are moderated by two important factors: the season and time spent outside. In two correlational studies and an experiment manipulating participants' time outdoors (total N = 605), pleasant weather (higher temperature or barometric pressure) was related to higher mood, better memory, and "broadened" cognitive style during the spring as time spent outside increased. The same relationships between mood and weather were not observed during other times of year, and indeed hotter weather was associated with lower mood in the summer. These results are consistent with findings on seasonal affective disorder, and suggest that pleasant weather improves mood and broadens cognition in the spring because people have been deprived of such weather during the winter.

Rainmakers: Why bad weather means good productivity.

“…These survey results indicate that people indeed believe that weather will impact their productivity and that bad weather conditions in particular will be detrimental to productivity. This conventional wisdom may be based on the view that bad weather induces a negative mood and therefore yields harmful effects on executive functions (Keller et al 2005). In contrast to this view, we propose that bad weather actually increases productivity through an alternative psychological route.…”

“…Our data-entry tasks in Study 1 and 2 required workers to pay attention to the given task. Another possibility is that, as Keller et al (2005) noted, positive moods induced by good weather conditions may broaden workers' cognition, thus increasing the flexibility of their thoughts. Consequently, future research should include different types of tasks that require not only attention but also creativity.…”

“…This work therefore used weather to induce either positive or negative moods (more sunlight: Cunningham, 1979, Parrott and Sabini, 1990, and Schwarz and Clore, 1983; low humidity: Sanders and Brizzolara, 1982;high barometric pressure: Goldstein, 1972, Keller et al, 2005and high temperature, Cunningham, 1979, Howarth and Hoffman, 1984, and Keller et al, 2005 and then examined the consequences of weather on people's attitudes (e.g., their life satisfaction; see Schwarz and Clore, 1983), judgment and behavior (e.g., aggression towards others; see Larrick et al, 2011). In addition, clinical psychologists have identified the harmful effects of seasonal affective disorder, in which seasonally recurrent symptoms of sadness and depression occur in winter months when the temperatures drop and the days grow short (Rosenthal et al, 1984;Kasper et al, 1989).…”

“…The researchers found that negative mood induced by bad weather improved real-life memory accuracy and higher discrimination ability, as measured by the number of items recognized and recalled correctly. On the other hand, Keller et al (2005)'s correlational and experimental studies suggest that positive moods induced by higher temperature and barometric pressure led to higher working memory (as measured by higher spans of digits remembered) and more flexible thinking styles. In addition, they found that the amount of time spent outdoors and the season moderated the effects of weather on mood and cognition.…”

Does Weather Actually Affect Tipping? An Empirical Analysis of Time‐Series Data1

“…The effect of weather on human emotion and social interactions is well supported in the literature. It has been shown that weather has both seasonal and daily effects on mood; it is associated with productivity levels, emotional crises, hostility, memory, and cognition (Denissen, Butalid, Penke, & van Aken, 2008;Persinger, 1975;Barnston, 1986;Dubitsky, Weber, & Rotton, 1993;Keller, et al, 2005).…”