pro/con

Write your topic: weather and moods

Write your tentative question: why do people always relate bad weather to depression? Is it just a common sense that people are told to think this way since they were born, or are there any scientific explanations behind it? If there do exist scientific reasons, how does weather influence our negative emotions invisibly? If not, what is the true factor to influence our moods?

Write your tentative thesis (this should be a statement that is debatable, with which someone could disagree): People should be responsible for their moods’ changes, rather than weather.

Claims that support/strengthen your argument
Identify the claims that support your argument; for each one, draft one or more sentences.
What evidence (stats, studies, trends, anecdotes, expert opinion) will you need to support
each claim? Aim for a good mix of evidence. As you look for evidence at this step,
start compiling your annotated bibliography.

1. In a few cases, weather relates to moods, but it doesn’t mean that weather is a reason to cause moods’ changes. Someone else say it is true, so it implies the fact is true. People relate mood to weather because of psychological autosuggestion.

2. Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is also possible to happen in summer. There are some true personal experiences shared in an article called “Seasonal Depression Can Accompany Summer Sun” in NY Times. So the disease contains summer SAD and winter SAD.

3. People use a small amount number of extreme cases to represent the whole, such as SAD.

4. The experiments which conclude weather changes mood does not consider other factors, such as age, gender. There is an experiment conducted by Goldsteim in 1972 by questionnaire, suggesting that sex, belief in external
Control may be related to reactivity to the weather. Klimstra wrote a report on Individual Differences in How Weather Affects Mood, acknowledging that people may be happier in sun and may be happier in rain as well.

Claims that undermine/weaken/challenge your argument
Identify the claims that challenge your argument; for each one, draft one or more sentences.
What evidence (reason, stats, studies, trends, anecdotes, expert opinion) will you need to counter
this claim? Aim for a good mix of evidence. As you look for evidence at this step,
start compiling your annotated bibliography.

1. Suicide rates are high in areas with low temperature and less sunshine. For example: Alaska has the highest suicide rate among all states the US. On the Statewide Suicide Prevention Council website: “The rate of suicide in the United States was 11.5 suicides per 100,000 people in 2007. In 2007, Alaska’s rate was 21.8 suicides per 100,000 people. Alaska has the highest rate of suicide per capita in the country.” Also, the suicide rates of Sweden and Norway are very high.

2. Seasonal affective disorder (SAD), which mostly occurs in winter, with symptoms like depression, anxiety and extremes of moods. “SAD occurs in both the northern and southern hemispheres, but is extremely rare in those living within 30 degrees latitude of the equator” (Mental Health American.org).

3. Some experiments claim that bad weather causes depression and good weather is happy. For example, Howard and Hoffman (1984) had 24 college students keep track of their moods, which shows a significant effect on mood correlated with the weather. And also, another study by Keller and his colleagues (2005) declares the same opinion.