Distinguished Professor Arthur Stone, PhD used an essay in the Sunday Review section of the New York Times
to teach a lesson about psychological biases that may cause people to
misjudge their own experiences, sometimes with undesirable consequences.
The invited essay, titled Mondays Aren’t as Blue as We Think, was
published in the Opinions pages on October 14, 2012.
In the
essay, Dr. Stone described the results of his studies showing that while
people think Monday is the worst day of the week, they do not actually
experience it that way. This conclusion is based on a year-long survey
conducted by the Gallup Organization, which called 1,000 people in the
United States each day and asked them to describe their moods
“yesterday.” When Dr. Stone and his colleagues analyzed the results,
they found that the moods experienced by people on Monday were no
different from their moods on Tuesday through Thursday and only a trifle
worse than those on Friday.
“The blue Monday mystery highlights a phenomenon familiar to behavioral scientists,” Dr. Stone wrote in the New York Times
essay, ”that beliefs or judgments about experience can be at odds with
actual experience. Indeed, the disconnection between beliefs and
experience is common.” Beliefs about blue Mondays, Dr. Stone said, may
be caused by “the so-called contrast effect.” Because the shift in mood
from Sunday to Monday constitutes the largest shift that occurs during
the week, Monday may appear to be worse due to the contrast with the day
before.
“The real value of this work,” Dr. Stone said, “comes
from understanding the psychological processes that create our memories —
and the impact this has on our decisions.” Biases in recalling the
experience of a colonoscopy, for example, may discourage a person from
seeking one in the future; similarly, faulty recollections of the
experience of pain may lead to distortions in the results of pain
research.
Dr. Stone is Vice Chair of the Department of
Psychiatry and Behavioral Science and Director of the Applied Behavioral
Medicine Research Institute at Stony Brook University. He is a leading
expert in the field of Behavioral Medicine, with a special interest in
patient self-reporting of medical and psychological outcomes.
