Summary

The content discusses the psychological impact of Mondays, challenging the common dread associated with the start of the working week and suggesting that real-time mood assessments show Mondays may not be as bad as people remember them to be.

Abstract

The article "The Psychological Impact of Monday. Why Does it Fill us with Dread?" explores the widespread negative perception of Mondays, supported by lower stock market returns, peak employee incivility, and increased calls to STD helplines. It contrasts the typical working week pattern with the nuanced reality of people's experiences, highlighting the disproportionate negativity towards Mondays compared to other weekdays. Psychological research indicates that while there is some evidence of lower moods on Mondays, the effect is less pronounced when mood is assessed in real-time rather than remembered. This discrepancy is attributed to focalism, where the negative stereotype of Monday overshadows positive aspects of the day. The article suggests that mindfulness could help mitigate the negative perception of Mondays by encouraging people to live in the moment and recognize that their mood may not be as adversely affected as they anticipate. As alternative working patterns emerge, such as four-day workweeks, the article speculates on how these changes might alter our perceptions of the days of the week.

Opinions

Mondays are commonly viewed as the worst day of the week, with empirical evidence suggesting lower moods and increased negative occurrences.
Real-time mood assessments reveal that the negative impact of Mondays is often exaggerated in memory compared to the actual experience.
The negative perception of Mondays is influenced by focalism, which exaggerates the day's unpleasantness while overlooking its positive aspects.
Mindfulness is proposed as a strategy to counteract the negative stereotypes of Monday, encouraging a more accurate assessment of one's mood and experiences.
The article posits that changes in working patterns, such as the four-day workweek, could potentially reshape our collective perception of Mondays and other days of the week.

The Psychological Impact of Monday. Why Does it Fill us with Dread?

Lots of bad things tend to happen on Mondays: stock market returns are lower¹, employee incivility is at its highest² and even STD helplines see a peak in call volume³.

Is it any wonder then that for many people Mondays are a source of dread?

The classic working pattern for many is a five-day working week — with Monday to Friday being working days and Saturday and Sunday being non-working days. This distinction between working and non-working days is also common within the research literature. After all, it can be a convenient way to explore the psychological effects of work and rest cycles. However, there is one important issue with this approach:

It assumes that all days of the working week are experienced in a similar way⁴.

But let’s face it, our experiences are much more nuanced than that. What tends to happen is more along the lines of:

Monday — Urgh
Tuesday — Let’s get productive
Wednesday — Hump Day
Thursday — Almost the weekend
Friday — TGIF
Saturday — Me time
Sunday — Wait, where did the weekend go?

Of all of the working days, Monday has the worst reputation by far. In a survey of 202 employees, Monday was consistently rated as the worst day of the week whilst its fun-time cousins Friday and Saturday were rated as the best days of the week⁵.

But are Mondays ACTUALLY as bad as we tend to think they are?

Psychological research paints an interesting picture of the impact of Mondays on employee mood.

Mondays Are Remembered as Being Worse Than They Are

Remember that survey, where employees rated Mondays as the worst day of the week? That’s a pretty common finding across research studies and there does appear to be modest evidence that people’s moods tend to be lower on Mondays. However, there’s an important catch. Mondays are most frequently rated as the worst day of the week when employees are asked to REMEMBER their mood from a previous week. When employees are asked to rate their mood in real-time on the day itself the negative impact of Mondays tends to be reduced

What this suggests is that whilst people may have an initial negative reaction to the thought of returning to work on Monday, we tend to adapt pretty quickly once we’re there and end up not being affected for long⁸.

So if our moods aren’t actually THAT much lower on a Monday, why do we often think that they are? Well, it’s potentially thanks to a human quirk known as focalism.

Focalism is the tendency to focus too much on a single piece of information (in this case our negative perception of Mondays) whilst ignoring other relevant sources of information (such as enjoying the chance to catch up with colleagues) when making judgments.

So when we ask employees to remember how their mood was last Monday, the stereotype of Monday being perceived as a bad day potentially blocks out those smaller, but important, moments that make it comparable to the rest of the working week.

Living in the Moment — There’s a real case here then for mindfulness. Thinking ahead to Monday may trigger those negative stereotypes and decrease your mood. However, by being present at the moment and exploring your mood in real time you may begin to recognise that Monday is not actually that bad.

There is still more work to be done in understanding the dynamic effects of the days of the week on individuals' moods and performance.

However, as organisations increasingly trial alternative working patterns (such as four-day working weeks) it will be interesting to see how our days of the week stereotypes change and evolve. Will we all be saying ‘Thank God it’s Thursday’ or will the extra rest day give us a boost to coping resources, helping employees to stay both productive and satisfied with their work?

Only time will tell. But through the continued work of business psychologists, we will be able to build a clearer picture of what works best and for whom.

Dr. Anthony Thompson

References

1- Pettengill, G. N. (2003). A survey of the Monday effect literature. Quarterly Journal of Business and Economics, 42(3/4), 3–27.

2- Nicholson, T., & Griffin, B. (2017). Thank goodness it’s Friday: Weekly pattern of workplace incivility. Anxiety, Stress, & Coping, 30(1), 1–14.

3- Crutzen, R., & Mevissen, F. E. (2011). Just another manic Monday: peaking sexual concerns after the weekend. Archives of sexual behavior, 40, 1105–1106.

4- Pindek, S., Zhou, Z. E., Kessler, S. R., Krajcevska, A., & Spector, P. E. (2021). Workdays are not created equal: Job satisfaction and job stressors across the workweek. Human Relations, 74(9), 1447–1472.

5- Areni, C. S., & Burger, M. (2008). Memories of “bad” days are more biased than memories of “good” days: past Saturdays vary, but past Mondays are always blue. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 38(6), 1395–1415.

6- Stone, A. A., Hedges, S. M., Neale, J. M., & Satin, M. S. (1985). Prospective and cross-sectional mood reports offer no evidence of a” blue Monday” phenomenon. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49(1), 129.

7- Totterdell, P., Parkinson, B., Briner, R. B., & Reynolds, S. (1997). Forecasting feelings: The accuracy and effects of self-predictions of mood. Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 12(3), 631–650.

8-Areni, C. S., Burger, M., & Zlatevska, N. (2011). Factors affecting the extent of Monday blues: Evidence from a meta-analysis. Psychological reports, 109(3), 723–733.

9- Ehrlinger, J., Readinger, W. O., & Kim, B. (2016). Decision-making and cognitive biases. Encyclopedia of mental health, 12(3), 83–7.