Does the weather influence how we evaluate others? A new study published in the Journal of Management Accounting Research explores this intriguing question. Researchers Carolyn Deller and Jeremy Michels examined whether sunny or cloudy days impact subjective performance evaluations in the workplace.
Contrary to popular belief, they found no evidence that sunny days result in more positive evaluations. Instead, their experiment revealed that weather conditions can influence cognitive biases—specifically, the „spillover effect.“ This effect occurs when an evaluator unconsciously allows performance in one area to influence judgments in another, unrelated area.
The study, conducted using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, assigned participants to either a sunny or cloudy day condition and asked them to rate a hypothetical manager’s performance. While overall favorability of evaluations did not change based on weather, the spillover effect was significantly reduced on cloudy days in certain geographic regions, such as the Northeast and Midwest.
One explanation for this finding is that cloudy weather may encourage more careful, deliberate thinking, reducing reliance on mental shortcuts. Conversely, sunny days might promote heuristic thinking, making evaluators more prone to biases.
Interestingly, the study also found no direct link between weather and mood, challenging the assumption that people are generally happier on sunny days and more critical on cloudy days. Instead, the results suggest that weather subtly influences how people process information rather than their emotional state.
These findings have practical implications for organizations that rely on subjective evaluations. Awareness of environmental factors, such as weather, could help mitigate unconscious biases in performance reviews and improve decision-making accuracy.
While more research is needed to understand the full extent of weather’s impact on workplace judgments, this study highlights the hidden ways external factors shape our perceptions—without us even realizing it.
Find out more here.