that crazy full moon myth

Ok, this is why you should never drink coffee at nine pm. You then get inspired to write a blog entry and cannot sleep until you do it. Must be the approaching full moon. Hey why not blame the moon. It gets blamed for everything else from wacky people to increases in emergency room visits to increases in crime and traffic accidents. However science has pretty much proven this to be a myth. So why are so many people convinced the full moon has an effect on peoples moods. My wife for example who works in customer service swears up and down that the full moon makes her callers more wacky. Even though there have been several occasions on full moons as recent as the one this past June where she has said she did not have hardly any strange phone calls. Now one would imagine that if the full moon effect were true there should be no exceptions. A case of selective memory. Also when I press her for details on what makes the calls more strange she can't come up with an answer except to say she gets more of them. What is actually happening is not that she gets more strange calls she and others who work with the public my self included since I work for a group of radio stations, are paying more attention to them around the full moon giving the appearance of more strange phone calls. It is a case of if you expect it to happen then it will appear to happen. Selective memory plays a big part in why so many people believe in the full moon effect myth. Also the human mind has a defense mechanism of trying to find a pattern where none exists. For example people see strange behavior around a full moon there fore it must be the moon. This kind of defense mechanism was used by many people after the nine eleven attacks on the World trade center. People thought that it must have had something to do with the emergency phone number used here in the U S Despite there being no proof of this many people are still convinced that this has some significance. If the attacks had happened on let's say November the fifth the human mind would have come up with some pattern for that date. Also, many people do not take other factors in to consideration. Like maybe the reason there were more traffic accidents on a Friday night was not because of the full moon, it was because it was a weekend and more people would have been out regardless of the moon phase. There is also no evidence to support the claim of many in the medical or police fields that admissions and arrests increase during a full moon Also perception bias plays a big part. In other words you look for evidence to prove your belief ignoring the evidence that does not fit. Also many people make the mistake of thinking correlation means causation. Just because something happens during a full moon does not mean the moon was the cause. It would be like saying, the TV was turned on during a thunderstorm and was struck by lighting therefore the TV being on must be the reason it was stuck. So the full moon effect is mainly based on peoples selective memory, perception, and the brains ability to find a pattern where none exists.

sources for this article are linked in the text.