What is Seasonality?
Seasonality is the idea of mood and behaviour changing with the seasons. For example, how someone might act in the summer could be different than how they would act in the winter.
Generally, almost everyone is impacted by seasonal changes: an American study showed that 92% of people reported some sort of seasonal change in mood and behaviour, and this number was 91% in a similar study conducted in both Norway and Denmark.
The impact of seasonality is important because, not only do most people feel its impacts, but because knowledge of how this impacts us can be helpful.
How Does Seasonality Impact People?
Having a high level of seasonality is linked with seasonal affective disorder, or as it's fittingly abbreviated as, SAD. During the dark winter months, those affected by SAD tend to feel more depressed.
Outside of its association with SAD, high seasonality is also linked to (non-seasonal) types of anxiety and depression. Furthermore, physical health conditions like diabetes, higher cholesterol levels, and hypertension are linked to high seasonality as well — people should be aware of seasonality during all seasons.
Who is More Prone to Seasonality?
While everyone is different, there are some qualities of people that make them more prone to high seasonality. Sex, age, and chronotype (your sleep and work schedule) are the major factors, while location, marital status, and education are minor factors.
A 2021 Norwegian study saw that women reported 10% more seasonality than men. In fact, women have a 86% higher chance of having high seasonality.
The same study noted that the prevalence of seasonality only seemed to decrease with age; those aged 30 or younger have more than triple the incidences of seasonality compared to those aged 70 or older.
People with late chronotypes, the tendency to wake up later and work better during the later hours of the day, were more prone to seasonality as well. High seasonality occurred in 37% of “night owls” compared to the 13.8% prevalence in “early birds.”
Study Limitations
While the study had a larger sample size compared to similar studies on the topic, most of the respondents were younger and most had a post-secondary education, which impacted what the results could show.
It is also worth noting that the study was conducted starting in late October, and higher seasonality tends to be reported during the winter months compared to the fall months. Therefore, the seasonality levels could have been different if the study was conducted in a month like February.
Source:
Bjorvatn, B., Saxvig, I. W., Waage, S., & Pallesen, S. (2021). Self-reported seasonality is strongly associated with chronotype and weakly associated with latitude. Chronobiology International, 38(2), 278–285. https://doi.org/10.1080/07420528.2020.1844725.
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