Anyone have information on a scientific study that explains why full moons result in people acting nuts!
Egads it’s been one tangled conversation after another all day!
[earthsky.org]
psychosomatic affect. People believe the full moon makes them do crazy shit, so they do crazy shit.
Might be fun to study what part of the idea causes them to do this and if the various types of moon and their beliefs create a stronger reaction.
I don’t think there’s a supernatural impact, but our beliefs shape our experience and understanding how that happens is interesting and sometimes useful
I don't know about people, but I work with dogs, and yes, the full moon does affect their behaviour. I don't know if there is any scientific study on that. Of course, I'm not suggesting it has to do with some woo. The coyotes on my property are definitely more active during the full moon because there's more light for them to hunt during the night.
Generally, the full moon is just more noticeable. When crazy stuff happens, as it does every day, people just tend to associate that they noticed the full moon with the crazy stuff on that particular day. The relationship is actually spurious. There is no real correlation.
The same thing happens when people are near graveyards. The sounds of nature which are everywhere tend to creep people out more often if they are in a graveyard.
Generally it is just making associations with what are unusual sights or locations.
There is also a bit of the placebo effect happening. Once a full moon has a reputation for crazy shit happening, people ten to do crazy shit around the full moon. Then they can dismiss their actions on the moon instead of taking responsibility for their own actions... and people will tend to accept their rationale.
I remember back in the 1960's iut was still acceptable to excuse bad behavior if a person was drunk. However they did studies, where they had people consume enough alcohol to get to the stage of a blackout, and they determined that people still retain their knowledge and awareness of right and wrong even when dunk to the point of blackout. So, law enforcement and the courts no longer gave otu lighter sentences if the person was drunk. People were held responsible for their actions, because they never lost awareness of knowing when they were doing wrong no matter how drunk they got.
OK. I got a bit off topic there. Anyway, the studies that appear to show crazy shit happening during a full moon, are almost always flawed in design (biased), or are naturally occurring outliers (an outlier is basically when you have enough studies, eventually one will provide abnormal results despite good design and procedures, which is why science demands replications of studies before they are considered to be valid. This is to insure that the study was nto just a statistical anomaly also known as an "outlier" ).
I think you may have something there with the placebo effect, and people being less restrained if they know it’s a full moon.
I know that we tend to make false correlations perhaps from early survival instincts or a desire to have an answer or for some other unknown reason.
One of my favorite things to do with a of friends is to claim that lulls in a conversation occur at 20 of or 20 past the hour, and it’s pretty easy to do, just wait for the lulls that occur at that time and point it out and if there starts to be a lull at a different moment start conversation.
I usually fess up at the end of the evening though
There's also a slight difference in gravitational pull. The sun and moon are on exact opposite sides of the earth.
It blew my kids' minds when I explained to them how tides really work - and that the oceans are being pulled in a constant bulge towards the sun/moon, and the earth "slides"/rotates under the bulge...
@Geektheist that’s why I was wondering if there were any good studies on it. We know there are some physical impacts from the different cycles of the moon, so is there anything like maybe because it’s brighter at night people don’t sleep as well and then their cognitive skills are impaired causing some crazy
I don’t think there is a super natural answer but perhaps some impact from something