A decade of survey data suggests that people’s attitudes towards loyalty, authority and tradition fluctuate throughout the year, potentially revealing a connection between seasonal anxiety, social cohesion and prejudice.
GOLDEN PAGE NEWS |October 24, 2026
We often associate changing seasons with changes in mood, energy and daily routines. But could the time of year also influence how people think about right and wrong, how strongly they value tradition, and how they respond to people who are different from them?
Research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) suggests that some moral priorities may fluctuate with the seasons.
Analysing more than 232,000 survey responses collected in the United States between 2011 and 2020, researchers identified a recurring pattern: support for certain values associated with loyalty, respect for authority and group traditions tended to rise in spring and autumn, then decline during midsummer and midwinter.
The findings, published in August 2024, challenge the assumption that people’s moral outlook remains completely stable throughout the year. They do not suggest that individuals suddenly change their beliefs every few months, but they indicate that the relative importance people attach to certain moral principles may shift over time. Source: PNAS research paper.
Two Different Sets of Moral Priorities
To investigate seasonal changes, researchers Ian Hohm, Brian O’Shea and Mark Schaller examined five moral foundations commonly studied in psychology.
Two concern the protection of individuals: care and fairness. Care emphasises avoiding harm to others, while fairness focuses on treating people justly and equitably. Researchers group these under the term “individualising values”.
The remaining three are loyalty, authority and purity. Loyalty emphasises commitment to a group; authority concerns respect for legitimate hierarchy and leadership; and purity relates to maintaining standards of sanctity or moral cleanliness. These are commonly described as “binding values” because they can strengthen group identity, shared norms and social cohesion.
Most people value aspects of both groups of principles, although the importance they attach to each differs.
Earlier research has associated stronger emphasis on binding values with more conservative political attitudes and greater support for punishment of people who violate group norms. Individualising values, meanwhile, have been associated with greater emphasis on individual rights and protection from harm.
These are broad statistical associations, not rules that predict every person’s beliefs or behaviour.
A Repeating Pattern Across the Year
The researchers examined self-reported moral values from 232,975 participants in the United States over a decade. They found a recurring, twice-yearly pattern in the endorsement of binding values.
Respondents tended to report stronger support for loyalty, authority and purity during spring and autumn. Support was lower in midsummer and around midwinter.
By contrast, the researchers found no comparable seasonal cycle in the endorsement of care and fairness.
The team then tested whether the pattern could be explained by an unusual sample of respondents at particular times of the year. Additional analyses, including another year of US data, supported the finding that the pattern was not easily dismissed as a sampling artefact.
Similar seasonal patterns appeared in data from Canada and Australia. However, the same pattern was not found in the United Kingdom, suggesting that the effect may not be universal and could depend on cultural, environmental or other circumstances. Source: University of British Columbia.
The results therefore point to a measurable relationship between the calendar and certain moral preferences, but they do not establish that everyone experiences the same changes or that the seasons alone are responsible.
Could Anxiety Help Explain the Changes?
One possible explanation involves anxiety and the perception of threat.
Previous psychological research has linked perceived threats with stronger endorsement of values that emphasise group loyalty, authority and shared traditions. When people feel uncertain or threatened, belonging to a group and relying on familiar rules may offer a sense of security.
To investigate this possibility, the researchers examined self-reported anxiety and Google searches for anxiety-related terms. They found that anxiety showed a similar seasonal pattern, with higher levels in spring and autumn and lower levels in midsummer and midwinter.
The similarity between these patterns suggests that anxiety may help explain some of the seasonal variation in binding values. However, the researchers found only partial evidence for this explanation. The study does not prove that seasonal anxiety directly causes people to become more committed to authority or tradition.
Why anxiety might fluctuate with the seasons also remains uncertain. The authors suggested that summer weather could contribute to the midsummer decline in binding values, particularly in places with more pronounced seasonal temperature changes. Winter holidays and changes in social routines might help explain the midwinter decline. These possibilities require further investigation.
The Social Consequences: Cohesion or Exclusion?
The findings raise an important question about the role moral values play in society.
Values that emphasise loyalty, authority and tradition can have positive effects. Shared expectations can encourage cooperation, help communities organise themselves and strengthen solidarity during periods of crisis. A group with a strong sense of mutual responsibility may find it easier to coordinate its response to difficult circumstances.
But these same values can also have a less positive side.
When commitment to a group becomes closely tied to rigid expectations about who belongs, people perceived as outsiders may face greater suspicion or rejection. Immigrants, ethnic and racial minorities, LGBTQ+ people and others who do not conform to prevailing social norms can become targets of prejudice.
The research raises the possibility that attitudes towards such groups may vary over the course of a year as moral priorities fluctuate. However, the study examined endorsement of moral values; it did not directly demonstrate that discrimination, hostility or hate crimes increase during particular seasons.
That distinction is important. A possible connection between moral priorities and prejudice should be treated as a subject for further research, rather than evidence that a particular season makes people discriminatory.
Could Seasonal Changes Affect Politics and Justice?
The potential implications extend to politics and legal decision-making.
People’s moral priorities can influence how they interpret public policy, assess political leaders and respond to questions about social order, immigration, individual rights and national identity.
If the importance attached to certain moral values varies seasonally, the researchers suggest that the timing of elections could be worth examining. An election held in autumn, for example, might take place during a period when binding values are more strongly endorsed in some populations than during midsummer.
However, the study did not establish that election dates change voting outcomes. Any such effect would need to be tested directly, accounting for party preferences, campaign events, economic conditions, candidate characteristics and many other influences.
The same caution applies to courts. Because moral priorities can be associated with attitudes towards rule-breaking and punishment, researchers have suggested investigating whether seasonal variation affects legal judgments. The study did not measure actual sentencing decisions or establish that courts deliver harsher outcomes at particular times of year.
The findings provide a reason to investigate these questions, not a basis for assuming that seasonal effects are already influencing elections or judicial decisions.
Why the Findings Matter Beyond North America
Although the research examined data from the United States, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom, it raises broader questions about how environmental conditions, social routines and emotional experiences interact with human psychology.
In many societies, seasonal transitions coincide with changes in work, education, religious observances, family gatherings and public life. These routines can influence how people spend their time, what they worry about and how connected they feel to their communities.
But seasonal patterns differ around the world. Countries near the equator may experience wet and dry seasons rather than the four-season cycle familiar in much of Europe and North America. Cultural calendars and local conditions also differ substantially.
The researchers’ findings should therefore not be applied automatically to every population. Further studies would be needed to establish whether similar patterns occur in African countries, including Nigeria, and whether the timing of local seasons is associated with changes in moral priorities.
A Reminder That Human Psychology Is Not Entirely Fixed
The study offers a fresh perspective on the relationship between the environment and human values. It suggests that even principles people regard as deeply held may show small, recurring fluctuations in how strongly they are endorsed.
That does not mean people abandon their moral convictions whenever the weather changes. Nor does it mean that seasonal shifts determine political ideology, prejudice or individual behaviour.
Instead, the findings highlight the possibility that moral judgement is shaped not only by enduring beliefs and personal experience but also by changing emotional and social circumstances.
Understanding these influences could help researchers better explain why people respond differently to questions of authority, fairness, belonging and social responsibility.
For society, the broader lesson is one of awareness: our convictions may feel constant, but the psychological conditions surrounding them can change. Recognising that possibility may encourage more careful reflection on our judgements of others, particularly when anxiety and uncertainty are high.
Golden Page News | Science, Psychology & Society
Research reference: Ian Hohm, Brian A. O’Shea and Mark Schaller, “Do moral values change with the seasons?”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, August 2024. Read the study.
