Seasonal Affective Disorder Essay

As mentioned earlier, Seasonal Affective Disorder is a sensational study in a field of psychology. Once it was classified, a variety of researches were conducted about human behaviours and moods in climate changes by many psychologists, psychiatrists, anthropologists, sociologists, even consumer analysists. Especially in the field of psychology, weather has been studied largely to understand its affective consequences, and how weather influences individual behaviour. In particular, past researches have suggested that several indicators of favourable weather conditions are associated with positive moods (Lee et al.). Furthermore, 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" (Lee et al.). In order to prove the hypothesis researchers conducted a case study. It was about shoppers recalling the unusually objects in the checkout area of a suburban shop on either a sunny or a rainy day (Lee et al.). The researchers found that negative mood persuaded by bad weather improved real-life memory accuracy and higher discrimination ability, as measured by the number of items recognized and recalled correctly (Lee et al.). In contrast, other experimental studies suggest that positive moods persuaded by higher temperature led to higher working memory (as measured by higher spans of digits remembered) and more flexible thinking styles. This case study has shown the weather does not only effect on people's moods but also cognitive behaviours and thoughts (Lee et al.).
On the contrary, psychologists have found that half of the 415 adolescents studied were not impacted much at all by changes in the weather, while the other half were (Grohol). They analysed participants in weather personality types. Personality types were divided into four parts summer lovers (17 percent), summer haters (27 percent), rain haters (9 percent), and those unaffected by weathers (48 percent) (Grohol). Summer lovers are people who feel "happier, less fearful, and less angry on days with more sunshine and higher temperatures. More hours of precipitation was associated with less happiness and more anxiety and anger." (Grohol). Summer haters were "less happy and more fearful and angry when the temperature and the percentage of sunshine were higher. With more hours of precipitation, they tended to be happier and less fearful and angry." (Grohol). Rain haters claimed that "Angrier and less happy on days with more precipitation. By comparison, they were happier and fearful, but less angry, on days with more sunshine and higher temperatures." (Grohol). Lastly, those who were unaffected by weather were not impacted by changes in the weather at all (Grohol).
Although, this research might not be enough to make a generalisation however, it definitely gives a new perspective and idea on the conflicting the topic into how weather impacts people's mood. As this researcher show that people might have different weather personality and due to people or participants' weather personality, the researchers could find research hard to find a strong connection or correlation between the weather and people's mood