Emily Chan
“There is a close relationship between anxiety and threat,” said Brian O’Shea, a co-author of the study and a psychologist at the University of Nottingham. “When you’re threatened, you then want to get protection from your in-group.”
The higher anxiety levels may cause people to place more emphasis on binding values, long-standing traditions, and close-knit social groups.
Other studies have revealed that people who feel more vulnerable to seasonal illnesses tend to be more distrustful and have a greater likelihood of conforming to the majority opinion.
Overall, these findings indicate that seasonal timing could influence decisions for major court cases, vaccination campaigns, and even election outcomes.
“People who endorse binding values tend to be more punitive toward people who commit crimes. And if you think about the millions of court cases that happen every year, this change could potentially push some judges and juries in really close call verdicts toward harsher punishments in spring and more lenient sentences in summer or during the winter holidays,” Hohm said.
A limitation of the study is that it relies on data from populations that are “Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD).”
So, the pattern might not be seen in marginalized groups. Still, it does reveal how the seasons affect human psychology.
The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA.
