Quote:
Originally Posted by Rob_K
I know lots of people who believe (know) with absolute certainty that the Full Moon negatively influences human behaviour. What about a 3/4 full Moon? Do you go 3/4 mad? A half-full Moon, half mad? If moonlight does influence behaviour there should be a full monthly cycle, building to a peak at Full Moon and bottoming out at New Moon. Not one single night's madness! 
Cheers - |
Rob, I found a relevant article in "mental health practice december 2004 vol 8 no 4". It is available as a pdf file
here.
In the second part there are some interesting statistics and plausible explanations as to why it is so.
A few relevant paragraphs below:
"The belief that the incidence of crises is correlated with lunar phase provides the worker with a sense of control and alleviates anxiety
...
Arguably, the more stressful an environment in which an individual works, the greater the likelihood is that he will make illusory correlations. Individuals link the full moon with abnormal events in a cause-effect chain, facilitated by the use of illusory correlation, by which mechanism-biased interpretations of behaviour by clinicians lead to the development and maintenance of erroneous perceptions and stereotypes are developed
...
A full moon is observed and a difficult shift is anticipated. Alternatively, in the middle of a stressful shift the full moon is observed and is considered to be evidence to corroborate the fact that this has been responsible for the stressful nature of the shift."
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"In the present study
51 per cent of the sample of nurses
expressed a
belief in the lunar effect
...
Knowledge about lunar phase: 26 (53 per cent) respondents
stated that they usually did not know the current lunar phase,
17 (35 per cent) that they usually did and 6 (12 per cent) that
they sometimes knew. However, 42 respondents (86 per cent)
were unable to correctly identify the lunar phase on the date
of survey completion and
only 7 (14 per cent) correctly did so"
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Cheers,
Alex