Does A Full Moon Affect our Mood?

Does the moon affect how we feel, our emotions and how we behave?

The Moon and its possible affects on people has fascinated people for centuries. The moon has been the object of our ancestral fascination and mythical speculation since time began.

The concept is something that researchers have looked in to for quite a while, but it is still yet to be proven that it does indeed affect us in some way.

An international group of researchers studied children to see if their sleeping patterns through lunar phases changed or if there were any differences in their daily activities. The research studied a total of 5,812 children from five continents. The children came from a wide range of economic and sociocultural levels, and variables such as age, sex, highest parental education, day of measurement, body mass index score, nocturnal sleep duration, level of physical activity and total sedentary time were considered. Data collection took place over 28 months, which is equivalent to the same number of lunar cycles. These were then subdivided into three lunar phases: full moon, half-moon and new moon.

The findings obtained in the study revealed that in general, nocturnal sleep duration around full moon compared to new moon reported an average decrease of five minutes but no other behaviours from the children was extremely different. The conclusion was to this study that no the moon did not affect us in any way and even though sleep disturbances was identified other explanations could be given to why this may have occurred.

Even with this evidence, this does not change the populations thoughts on the moon and many retell stories of how it affects childrens behaviour at school, how we cope in situations during certain phases of the lunar phase and what acts have been linked to a full moon such as suicides, murders and violent acts.

I decided to ask my group with a poster if they thought A Full Moon affected Moods.

The results……..I had monitored the comments throughout the day and decided to do a chart to show how many people felt it did affect them, it didn’t affect them or they wasn’t sure. I finished my monitoring at 12pm and these was the results……

Overall the reaction was that people did feel A full Moon did affect them in some way…whether you believe it does or not, the mystery of the moon and it’s affects will continue to fascinate people in the years to come….