Why Blue Monday is considered nonsense by psychologists

Today is Blue Monday and even though I think it's the perfect excuse to make nothing of my day, opinions about its existence are quite divided. Because where does it actually come from? I seriously thought this was based on hard facts and could not be denied; this day would undeniably be the most depressing day of the year.

Yes, that's a bit different. The term Blue Monday was first used in 2005 in a press release from the British travel company Sky Travel, which claims to have calculated this using a specific formula. By the way, according to them, Blue Monday only applies to the northern hemisphere — that's new information for me too.

This is the formula that was used in the 2005 press release, in case you're up for a mathematical challenge. The W stands for Weather, the d for Debt (your debts), the d for your monthly income, the t for the time since Christmas has ended, the q stands for the time since your New Year's resolutions failed, the m is your low motivational level and the n is the feeling of a need to take action. Especially the last two I find quite vague to express in numbers, but okay.

Psychologists also have their doubts about the existence of Blue Monday. To put it better: most of them think it's just one big hoax. They attribute its existence partly to a self-fulfilling prophecy. This means that when we have certain expectations of something, in this case a day, we also start to behave that way and take actions so that day goes exactly as you had planned beforehand. And so you have actually sabotaged your own day and still believe in the existence of Blue Monday.

But it goes even deeper than that: according to psychologists, we want to believe that Blue Monday exists because it is in our nature as humans to find patterns in things. We don't like things like coincidence or the randomness of life and it makes us uncomfortable. So when we can attribute something to a concept like Blue Monday, it gives us a sense of control, and we find that very pleasant. That's why we like to search for meaning in things that actually have none.

So do you feel better about pushing your lousy day onto Blue Monday: just keep doing it. As long as you know that it is actually based on nothing...

Source: Technology Networks