Hey everyone and welcome back to the Understandable English
Podcast. I'm Oliver and today we are
going to be talking about how seasons affect our mood.
So as we come into spring time, so the season of spring, I
noticed that my mood is beginning to change.
I start to feel like I have more energy.
I'm sure you have noticed a change in your mood too at
different times of the year. So I decided to start reading
online and I found a very interesting article by the
British Psychological Society and it looks it's called Seasons
and the Psyche. So it's looking at how seasons
affect our mood. And today I'm going to read a
bit of this article and talk about the different points.
So let's get started. But first, I want to remind you
that this podcast is on YouTube. If you're listening on YouTube,
great. If you're not, check out our
podcast on YouTube and be sure to share it with other friends
or classmates that are also studying English.
OK, let's get started. So people often say they have
seasonal affective disorder. So this is when they feel
depressed or SAD in different seasons and in others they feel
better. So Seasonal Affective Disorder
or SAD for short and often. This effects about 2 million
people in the UK alone. That's crazy.
But this change in mood and feeling is not only in winter.
It isn't only when we feel bad or worse, according to a lot of
research, SAD. So Seasonal Affective disorder
is just the beginning. There are many other ways that
seasons affect our behavior and how we think and this can be on
everything from how much we like to give money to other people,
right up to color preferences. So which colors we prefer?
The first point is mood. How do seasons affect our moods?
So psychologists have known about SAD, so seasonal affective
disorder for decades. People suffering from SAD eat
more, sleep more, feel less motivated, and are less
productive at certain times of the year.
And this low mood is most common in winter time.
These kind of symptoms are almost like animal hibernation.
So when an animal hides away for the year, they eat lots of food
and they sleep more waiting for the spring.
And the article, it talks about an interesting study which was
studied, sorry, a UK study which looked at Twitter users and they
did an analysis of their music streaming.
So the songs that they listened to on Spotify.
And they found that there was a link between the length of the
day, so how long our days are and the intensity of the songs.
So on longer days which are brighter and lighter for a
longer time people listened to more energetic songs, whereas on
shorter days people listened to more relaxed and lower mood
songs. And this behavior reflects the
season and the days around us. But I think this point on mood
is the most clear and simple one to all of us.
We all know that our moods change with the seasons, How
much is different from each person to person?
But of course, brighter, longer days make most people feel
happier. And darker, quieter days make a
lot of people feel a little bit more sad sometimes.
But let's look at the next point in the article, and this is
physical harm or violence. So when someone hurts someone
else or themselves, some studies have shown that crime is higher
with certain types of weather. So a study in Philadelphia in
the US found that there was almost 10% more violent crime on
hotter than average days. And another study in the same
area found that there was higher rates of domestic violence, So
that is violence at home during the summertime.
So this shows that when the weather is hotter, there may be
a higher risk of violence. And that's interesting.
I wonder why it happens. And some psychologists are
worried that rising temperatures could cause more violence.
So with climate change there could be more violence around
the world. So the Third Point we will look
at today is diet and exercise. So this article talks about how
some studies show that in warmer days we eat less.
So when you eat a meal outside on a warm day, you feel more
full, faster, so you'd need to eat less, whereas on a colder
day you don't feel as full. So warmer temperatures might
make us feel fuller after fewer calories.
And this might help to explain why we eat more and gain more
weight in winter. And this is interesting, but the
article also points out that differences in weight and diet
could be affected by cultural reasons.
So for example, in springtime more people start diets.
So a diet is when you maybe eat healthier or eat less food to
try to lose weight. And people do this possibly
culturally, because they have a feeling that they want to look
good for summertime because they will have less cloves in
summertime and people will see more of their bodies.
This one makes more sense to me. I think a lot of people in
springtime think, hmm, I want to start a diet and look better for
my holiday. So maybe that explains why there
are differences in diets and weights between winter, spring
and summer. So another really interesting
point is colour preferences. So this is the colours that we
like the most. And this article and the studies
they talk about show that seasonal changes, so different
seasons, make us prefer different colors.
So some studies show that in autumn people prefer yellow,
greenish yellow colors in autumn because these are associated
with the autumn leaves. So the color of the leaves on
trees in autumn, whereas in winter time these colors are
associated with sickness, so being unwell and people don't
tend to like these colors in January for example.
And in summertime there tends to be a preference towards brighter
colors like Blues and Reds, very bright colors.
But what do you think? Does the change in seasons or
different seasons affect you? And how does it affect you?
Does it affect your mood, Your activity, Your behavior?
Tell me in the comments below. Let me know what you think.
How do seasons affect you? So I hope this was interesting
for you and a useful podcast. If you want to read the article
that this podcast episode is based on, I will include it in
the description for you of the podcast and the YouTube video.
Thank you very much for listening and I hope that you
enjoyed this episode. Have a great rest of your day.
Goodbye.