7 Ways Weather Affects Human Behavior and Emotions

Aside from the obvious ways the weather influences our daily activities, such as the choice of clothing we wear, there are numerous less obvious and unexpected effects that it can have on us, and our list of the 7 ways weather affects human behavior and emotions can help you become vigilant of them. While becoming aware of all the intricate effects that weather can affect you with, you can also plan ahead and ensure yourself an enjoyable retirement, with our list of the 11 US Cities with the Most Pleasant Weather for Retirees.

We cannot talk about the weather and its effects on humans without discussing the climate change. Nowadays, the climate change deniers probably feel that they can finally rejoice knowing that the current US president Donald Trump is one of them. The problem with deniers is that they don’t care about the  scientific consensus or the evidence, even when it’s presented in a layman-friendly way on how we are breaking global temperature records on about once in a three year span or in a comic. They just continue propagating myths that have been debunked. Even though this video is not considered to be a scientific evidence of the global warming, it paints a pretty bleak picture of the future we are headed for. Whenever it’s time for periodically held hearings on issues related to climate change in the US Congress, Republicans naturally bring in John Christy to testify, as he is the only expert willing to sing the song that they want to hear, and by doing that disregard basically the whole scientific community which is opposed to his opinion on the subject, and considers his methodology to be flawed; in the meantime oceans are acidifying due to absorption of carbon pollution, but who cares?

Projections of increased poverty, social tensions, and environmental degradation as a result of climate change made the US Department of Defense begin to consider it a serious security risk. After reading our list of the 7 ways weather affects human behavior and emotions and learning ill effects that weather can have on the human psyche, you should be in agreement with the Pentagon’s assessment. Unfortunately, Republicans do not like this stance, and are doing everything they can to bar the Pentagon from spending money on adapting to the climate change.

As a guest on Late Night with Seth Meyers, comedian John Oliver joked about how “The Secret” worked only for Donald Trump, and thus it was Oprah’s fault that the Trump won elections. We feel that if that joke was hypothetically true and President Trump was wielding that sort of magical power for real, even his almighty denial still wouldn’t be able to stop the climate change and that the deniers really need to get in touch with the reality.

In preparation of this article we’ve tried to find as many effects that weather can have on humans, that are corroborated with science, so we used various sources that we link to in the descriptions, and so we finally begin with our list of ways weather affects human behavior and emotions.

7. Physical Health

A study showed that weather and even space weather conditions affect a daily number of emergency ambulance calls for elevated arterial blood pressure and women are more sensitive to geomagnetic activity disturbances than men. Another study showed an inverse relationship between atmospheric pressure and blood pressure during the spring and only for systolic blood pressure during winter nights.

Research indicates that being born in fall or winter increases a chance of developing a food allergy, probably due to receiving less sunlight and therefore getting less vitamin D.

Weather-sensitive osteoarthritis patients experience more joint pain than those without. While rainy and cold weather is what these people claim to be sensitive to, it is quite interesting that such patients living in cold and wet climate report lower pain intensity levels than those in warm and wet or warm and dry climate. The theory is that the changes of weather trigger an increase in pain alone and not the prevailing meteorological conditions.

6. TV and Cellphone Usage

Lower human mood caused by cold, cloudy and rainy days pushes people towards watching TV in the search for entertainment. The research confirmed that people spend more time watching TV during the winter months than in the summer. Spending too much time watching TV is connected with diabetes, obesity, and death from cardiovascular disease, so finding ways to alleviate the impact of the unfavorable weather conditions by providing leisure facilities with transportation links may result in better health of the population. This definitely deserves to be on our list of ways weather affects human behavior and emotions, right?

A study in Lisbon, Portugal showed that during unfavorable weather conditions people tend to communicate with those they have strong ties with much more than those of weak ties. Average call duration is not influenced by the weather, but longer calls are more likely during cold weather.

5. Friendliness

Feeling like hitchhiking? Drivers are more likely to pick up hitchhikers on sunny days than on cloudy days.

Looking for a date? Again, sunny days are your ally! A man approached women walking alone in the street and asked them for their phone numbers and had a success rate of 22.4% on sunny days compared to 13.9% on cloudy days.

People are also more likely to help strangers and leave bigger tips on a sunny day. It seems that people are as pleasant as the weather. They are more friendly, trusting, giving, and open to new possibilities when there’s sun and guarded if the weather is cloudy. Let’s see what’s next on our list of ways weather affects human behavior and emotions.

4. Gambling, Money Spending, and Stock Returns

You know that feeling when you wake up and it’s unexpectedly very sunny and you have this feeling that you could accomplish something special today? Well, it seems that happens to a lot of people, and the more sunshine there is, the more they get into that Charlie Sheen winning mood – the results are actually very good but not for them but for the lotteries…

On sunny days, people spend more money on products they buy for pleasure, even if those things aren’t durable and won’t last for more than three years.

A study examined the relationship of morning sunshine at a country’s leading stock exchange to a market index stock returns on the same day at 26 stock exchanges internationally over the time span of 15 years and discovered that while snow and rain are unrelated to returns, the sunshine actually is strongly positively correlated! Scientists couldn’t find any satisfactory rational explanation as to why that is so. This is, without a doubt, the strangest fact on our list of the 7 ways weather affects human behavior and emotions.

3. Violence

Seasonal patterns in violent crimes have been established as well. Apparently wanting to bash someone’s head with a baseball bat and commit aggravated assault is something that is more likely to cross your mind during the summer months than the rest of the year, while fist fights are more likely during the fall. It seems that hot weather actually creates hotheads. Other passion fueled crimes such as rape and intimate partner violence also have higher incidence rates during the summer. It’s quite telling that robberies, which aren’t normally driven by emotions, show no seasonal variations.

2. Seasonal Affective Disorder

Recurring depression during winter or summer months is called Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). Symptoms include sleeping too much, lack of energy, and feeling depressed. Those suffering from this disorder during summer may also experience heightened anxiety and insomnia. Factors that increase the risk of SAD are being female, living far from the equator, having a family history of other types of depression, having bipolar disorder, and being young. Medications used for treatment are antidepressants, usually selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) or bupropion. Other forms of therapy include light therapy, psychotherapy, and vitamin D, though vitamin D supplementation is only used in conjunction with another therapy and never by itself. Let’s see what’s on the first place on our list of ways weather affects human behavior and emotions.

1. Suicide

According to the US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health, “annual suicide deaths outnumber the total deaths from homicide and war combined.” Most people even if they are not suffering from SAD, when coming up with idea of the depressing weather probably think of the cold and cloudy winter days, so it is not surprising that scientists at first thought that the data showing the incidence of suicide, and having a peak during the month of maximum  daylight might be flawed, so they kept doing studies and more studies getting similar results. While the seasonal connection is definitively established, as well as that with the amount of daily sunlight and with high temperatures, further research should be conducted towards understanding the relationships of weather and suicides until predicting changes in suicide frequency at various temporal and spatial scales becomes possible. And so we end our list of the 7 ways weather affects human behavior and emotions with a hope that the reader now has a conviction and knowledge why society must do everything that is possible to slow down the climate change.