Seasonal depression in the winter months has been backed by science for a while now, but it turns out that seasonal anxiety can also be an issue for many people. This anxiety can dictate how we treat each other throughout the year.
New research published Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences The journal summarizes what scientists at the University of British Columbia found about people’s behavior across the seasons. They examined more than 230,000 survey responses from 2011 to 2020 that measured participants’ commitment to five moral values: loyalty, authority, purity, care, and fairness.
Finally, they discovered what appeared to be a seasonal cycle in values for Americans, with participants placing greater emphasis on loyalty, authority, and purity in the spring and fall, and less so in the summer and winter. Similar seasonal cycles were found in participant responses from Canada and Australia.
“These findings have implications for attitudes and actions that may be influenced by moral values, including intergroup biases, political ideologies, and legal judgments,” the team wrote in the study.
Scientists believe this trend can be explained in part by a seasonal cycle similar to anxiety.
“We found that anxiety levels peaked in the spring and fall, which coincides with periods when people are more likely to embrace binding values,” the study’s senior author, Dr. Mark Schaller, said in a statement about the findings. “This correlation suggests that higher anxiety may lead people to seek comfort in group norms and traditions supported by binding values.”
The study's lead author, Ian Hohm, explained further. “People's endorsement of moral values that promote group harmony and cohesion is stronger in spring and fall than in summer and winter,” he said. “Moral values are a fundamental part of how people make decisions and form judgments, so we think this finding may be just the tip of the iceberg because it has implications for all sorts of other downstream effects.”
Since many people experience extreme heat and cold during the summer and winter months, it may not be surprising that people deal with emotional turmoil during these months. This study highlights the potential ripple effects this can have not only among people, but also within government when it comes to making and enforcing laws.
During these hot summer months, instead of competing for space on the sand, try to make friends with the people next to you.