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Hello, this is don. Today's question is can a full moon
affect human behavior? Now this is a theory that I've heard many times and
there's a lot of different behaviours that people attribute to full moons. When is the next full moon? well,
I’ve given the full calendar of full moons coming in 2023.
new moon
It's believed that 80% of nurses 70% of mental health
clinicians and 50% of the general public, believe that the full moon affects
human behavior. And there are a lot of different areas that this belief says
can be affected by a full moon, like increasing psychiatric hospital
admissions, increasing crime, including violent crime, increasing the risk of
unstable behavior or mood dysphoria, increasing the number of seizures that
occur and number of traffic access. But is it true? Can the full moon which is
a phase of the moon really have that kind of effect on human behavior?
Well, to understand this theory, we have to understand a
little bit about the moon's orbit and about gravitation.
So, first with gravitation.
moon exerting pressure
The moon exerts gravitational force on everything else in
the universe technically, but everything else on the planet so human beings,
and all the objects on the planet. The most noticeable impact of this
gravitational force is the moon's effect on the oceans and other large bodies
of water. We know for instance, that the moon has an impact on tides. So, the
way the theory goes is that if the moon is exerting gravitational force on the
oceans, which are of course, mostly water, then it's exerting gravitational
force on people in some special way. Because human beings are mostly water, 80%
water. So, could this gravitational force actually change human behavior? Well,
to understand the rest of the gravitational force piece, we need to take a look
at the moon's orbit and how it does or doesn't line up with the phases of the
moon. A full moon, a new moon, these are phases of the moon. They don't have a
relationship with the distance between the Moon and the Earth. So, the moon
orbits the Earth in an elliptical pattern. And when the moon is closest to the
earth, that's called perigee. And when the moon's farthest away, that's called
apogee.
Phases of the moon.
The phases of the moon like full moon and new moon do not correspond with the perigee or the apogee. So, when the moon is exerting the most gravitational force on a person that's not necessarily related to a face of the moon. Another important part here is to understand how much gravitational force the moon at any stage perigee, Apogee or at any other stage in between, is actually exerting our person. And understand this we have to understand the concept of a Newton. A Newton is a measure of force and the amount of force required to accelerate a one-kilogram mass, one meter per second, per second.
So, it's a very small amount of force. If we think about
what it feels like on a person on earth, one newton would be about point twenty two pounds. So very light amount of force. Now, the amount of force the Earth
exerts on the average human being is around 950 Newton's. the amount of force
that the moon exerts on a human being is about point 004 Newtons.
So, it's extremely small.
And again, the full moon doesn't line up with the
distance, it doesn't really tell us anything about the distance. So, if that
small amount of gravitational force could affect human behavior, which is a
pretty big if, it's not tied to the face of the moon.
Now, there is some evidence that there is a relationship
between the full moon and some animal behavior. And in terms of human beings,
there is evidence that a full moon can have a very small effect on sleep. less
than 1% of the amount that somebody sleeps, would be subject to change based on
a full moon.
So, we could really say that the gravitational effect of
the moon and of course, the effect of a full moon, is negligible, maybe because
the full moon reflects more of the sunlight. There could be some effect there,
but this would be very small.
So, if the full moons really not affecting human
behavior, which it doesn't appear to be in any meaningful way, why does so many
people believe that the full moon affects behavior?
Well, for one thing, the idea that the full moon affects
human behavior goes back a long way. The term lunacy comes from a Latin word
for the moon. So, this belief that unstable behavior is associated with the
moon goes back many years. When you have a tradition like this when you have a
belief that goes back a long way, by default, most people will of course,
believe it until they see evidence to the contrary. And this is where a problem
comes in. First of all, we tend to look at events more than non-events. It's
just a condition of human behavior. So, if something unusual happens, we're
going to notice that if it happens to coincide with the full moon, we're going
to remember that coincidence, more than we remember, a non-event or even event
happening when there's not a full moon. So, there's a bit of memory bias at
work There. Also, when we believe something, as we would in the case of the
full moon, because this belief has been around a long time, we tend to look at
evidence that confirms our belief. So, we're going to look at things that
happened during a full moon, and we're going to tend to attribute those behaviours
to the full moon instead of other, more likely causes. So, to answer the
question, does the full moon affect human behavior? No, it doesn't appear to
affect behavior in any meaningful way.
I hope you found this description of the full moon and
human behavior to be interesting. Thanks for watching. Below is the calendar
for full moons coming next year, 2023. Indian standard time is also included.
full moons in 2023:
·
January: Full
Wolf Moon. January 6, 2023 18:08 EST (04:38 IST)
