Here is something to cheer you up for the weekend: you will, on average, be in a better mood at the weekend. This is according to an examination of a large representative US sample. Interestingly, they don’t find any difference in mood between Saturday and Sunday. This surprises me as I had read somewhere recently that mood on Sundays was lower than Saturday as people were dreading going back to work. What is particularly interesting is that they find no evidence of “Blue Monday” – an especially low mood on Mondays.
Day-of-week mood patterns in the United States: On the existence of ‘Blue Monday’, ‘Thank God it’s Friday’ and weekend effects
A.A. Stone et al. Journal of Positive Psychology, 7(4) 2012
There are many beliefs about the patterning of positive and negative mood over the course of the week. Support has been found for ‘Blue Monday’, ‘Thank God it’s Friday’ and Weekdays versus Weekend effects, although in relatively small studies and often with student samples. Using telephone questionnaire data from a large national survey (N = 340,000), we examined day-of-week (DOW) effects on positive and negative moods. Unlike prior studies, we also tested the potential moderating effects of four demographic variables on DOW. Strong support was found for better mood on weekends and Fridays, but there was minimal support for a Blue Monday effect and no differences were observed between Saturdays and Sundays. Demographics moderated some DOW effects: DOW effects were diminished for older and retired respondents, but there was little DOW difference by gender or presence of a partner. DOW is associated with mood, but not always in ways we believe.
