Our Morals Can Change With the Seasons, Study Finds

Seasonal depression in the winter months has been supported by science for some time now, but it turns out seasonal anxiety can also be an issue for many people. That anxiety, in turn, can dictate how we act toward each other throughout the year. 

New research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal outlined what University of British Columbia scientists found when it comes to people's behaviors by season. They looked at more than 230,000 questionnaire responses from 2011 to 2020 that measured participants' commitment to five moral values: loyalty, authority, purity, care, and fairness.

In the end, they discovered what appears to be a seasonal cycle between values for Americans; participants more strongly stand in 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 can be affected by moral values, including intergroup prejudices, political ideologies, and legal judgments," the team wrote in the study. 

The trend, scientists believe, could be partially explained by a similar seasonal cycle for anxiety. 

"We noticed that anxiety levels peak in the spring and autumn, which coincides with the periods when people endorse binding values more strongly," study senior author Dr. Mark Schaller said in a statement of the findings. "This correlation suggests that higher anxiety may drive people to seek comfort in the group norms and traditions upheld by binding values."

Study lead author Ian Hohm explained further. "People's endorsement of moral values that promote group cohesion and conformity is stronger in the spring and fall than it is in the summer and winter," he said. "Moral values are a fundamental part of how people make decisions and form judgments, so we think this finding might just be the tip of the iceberg in that it has implications for all sorts of other downstream effects."

With extreme heat and extreme cold characterizing the summer and winter for many people, it might not come as a surprise that humans deal emotional turmoil during those months. This study illuminates the possible ripple effects this can have, not just among people, but in government when it comes to legislating and enforcing laws. 

So during these hot summer months, try to make friends with those next to you at the beach instead of competing for a spot on the sand.