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Contrary to popular beliefs about winter sluggishness and depression, human cognition is not affected by the seasons




In popular culture, it’s long been assumed that winter brings sadness, fatigue, and lower motivation. Media headlines each year warn of “winter depression,” often citing seasonal affective disorder (SAD)—a term coined by US biological psychiatrists in the 1980s to describe depression recurring in winter and fading by spring. The idea caught on quickly, even in countries where winters are mild. Yet, when examined closely, evidence for this supposed seasonal slump is surprisingly weak.

In the 1990s, when I moved from the French Alps to Tromsø—350 km north of the Arctic Circle—I expected to find a gloomy population plagued by months of darkness. Instead, I found quite the opposite. Locals didn’t fight the darkness with artificial floodlights but embraced “koselig,” the Norwegian ideal of coziness. Candles glowed in cafés and homes, creating warmth without bright light. This experience inspired me to test whether people in Tromsø actually showed cognitive decline in winter compared with summer.

Our team tested 100 people twice across seasons on memory, attention, reaction time, and verbal tasks. Contrary to expectations, performance was almost identical, and where differences appeared, winter often showed an advantage. Our paper, “Arctic Cognition,” published in 2000, challenged the notion that darkness dampens the mind.

Two decades later, revisiting the science revealed that little had changed. A 2018 study in Tromsø found no cognitive differences between seasons in adolescents. Research from Antarctica, where participants lived through months of constant day or night, likewise showed no decline during winter darkness. A vast New Zealand study of 70,000 older adults found no link between the month of testing and cognitive performance.

One brain-imaging study from Belgium in 2016 did find seasonal variations in blood flow, suggesting that brains in summer consumed more oxygen while performing attention tasks. Yet behavioral results were identical year-round, and the smaller oxygen use in winter might actually signal greater efficiency. The sample, however, was tiny—fewer than 10 participants per season—making broad claims untenable.

A deeper problem is expectation bias. Because society so firmly believes winter dulls the mind, researchers may be predisposed to see patterns that aren’t there. A critical reading of these studies shows that claims of cognitive seasonality rely on overinterpreted or inconsistent data. The myth of sluggish “winter brains” persists far more strongly in culture than in empirical science.

The same scepticism applies to mood. If seasonal depression truly impairs cognition, one would expect people with SAD to think less clearly in winter. Yet a 2017 Danish study comparing SAD patients and healthy controls found no seasonal difference; both groups performed consistently across all tests. Even large-scale psychological surveys contradict the SAD narrative. A 2016 study of more than 34,000 Americans found no higher depressive symptoms during winter—not even among clinically depressed individuals—and no correlation between latitude and mood.

Within high-latitude communities such as Tromsø, psychologists and clinicians have long been doubtful. Few now diagnose SAD formally, viewing it as a cultural construction that expanded into a mini-industry of “light therapy” gadgets and boutique treatments. As one Norwegian paper wryly asked, “What is this thing called SAD?”

My neighbour in Tromsø once told me, “There wasn’t any winter depression before the university came.” He might be right. Though winter’s darkness seems intuitively linked to sadness, scientific attempts to prove this connection have consistently failed. The human mind appears remarkably stable across the seasons. The data challenge the notion that darkness breeds despair—suggesting instead that our beliefs, not the sun, shape how we feel.

In Norway, they say, “There’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes.” Perhaps the same is true for mood: the season itself doesn’t weigh us down—only our ideas about it do.

SOURCE - PSYCHE 

WORDS COUNT- 600

F.K SCORE- 14


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