The third Monday of January, dubbed ‘Blue Monday,’ has long been seen as the most depressing day of the year, but a Polish psychologist has dismissed the phenomenon as a marketing gimmick.
Dr. Magdalena Nowicka says that any evidence for the existence of this day being the gloomiest of all was unreliable.
“The term Blue Monday can hardly be considered scientific, because the process of defining it did not take into account practically any elements of reliable scientific methodology,” said Dr. Nowicka, who works at the Faculty of Psychology at Warsaw’s SWPS University.
There have been no sound studies confirming the existence of this effect, Science in Poland reported.
The creator of the term—American psychologist Cliff Arnall—even described his own work as pseudoscience devised for advertising purposes and attempted to dispel the myth that he himself created.
Origins of the term
In an article sent to the PAP press agency, Dr. Nowicka said that the “most depressing day of the year” was originally intended to help sell trips for a travel company.
The story began in 2004, when Arnall, a psychologist working at Cardiff University in Wales, was approached by a PR company working for the travel agency Sky Travel and was asked to calculate the best day to book or buy a trip.
“He built a pseudoscientific mathematical formula. He took into account, among other things, the weather, but also various uncountable factors—such as motivation or the need to take action,” Dr. Nowicka said.
Although Arnall’s job was to calculate the best day to buy a trip, not the most depressing day of the year, the concept of ‘Blue Monday’ gained enormous popularity.
A grain of truth?
Dr. Nowicka did, however, admit that there may be a grain of truth behind the marketing ploy.
“Perhaps the January drop in mood assumed by Arnall, usually noticeable around the third week of January, results from experiences that we often share in society, such as the feeling that we will not be able to fulfill our New Year's resolutions, the need to bear the consequences of large expenses related to the Christmas and New Year period, or simply limited access to sunlight,” she said.
Dr. Nowicka suggested that we may experience emotional downturns in January more strongly than similar dips at other times of the year, because it comes after the optimistic Christmas and New Year period.
“This difference makes the change in well-being more noticeable to us. However, the phenomenon of the January mood dip is certainly not as common as Arnall assumed,” Dr. Nowicka said.
Blue Monday probably gained popularity in the marketing world because it provides a justification for lifting one’s mood through shopping and hedonistic consumerism, Dr. Nowicka noted.
