According to a new study, there is no difference between the state of mind, general mood or stress levels on Mondays compared to Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Instead latest research has reported that it is the difference between moods at the weekends to Monday morning that makes it appear more distressing.
Research which was published in the Journal of Positive Psychology, set to discover if there was any validity to ‘Monday Blues’, ‘Feel good Fridays’ and if there was any disparity in mood between week days and the weekend.
Previous research on the topic has been relatively confined to students, particularly university students. This latest research examined the responses given via telephone interviews from a large national survey of 340,000 people. The days of the weeks were correlated to mood to establish if there was a difference.
In addition to days of the week, the researchers took into account other social elements that may have an influence on mood including whether the individual being questioned was in a relationship, the age of the participant and their gender.
It was concluded that Fridays was correlated with significant better mood in the general population than other days of the week. However, blue Mondays was a phenomena that did not gain support from this large scale analysis, instead, there was little difference in mood over the the days of the week between Monday and Thursday.
The researchers reported that there was little difference in the days of the week effect between the genders or whether the individual had a partner. Additionally, it was reported that there was no day of the week effect in older or retired participants.
So the next time you single out Monday as a gloomy day, just see it as a reflection on how good your weekend must have been.
