Is My Bad Mood Blowing In The Wind?

Posting Date: 05/28/2002

Original Posting: 5/30/2000

Chuck: I get cranky on windy days. Years ago I read a story about winds in France and the Santa Ana winds here in California.

The article said that the incidence of assault and murder spike when the winds are blowing. The suspicion was that positive ions generated from these winds affected the human psyche.

Dr. Dean: You are referring to some outdated ideas. Positive ion generators were the topic of the day when I first started in radio. The idea was that different weather systems change the ionic composition of the air and that changes human behavior.

The statistics have not borne this out. Mayhem and violence do go up along with a rise in temperature, but this has nothing to do with wind or positive ions.

I don't know what's getting your goat, but it's not the wind. This is a lesson in not making assumptions that two things happening at the same time have a causal relationship.

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