Richard E. Lucas

Richard E. Lucas

Psychologist and first author of a 2013 study of more than a million Americans that found the weather does not reliably affect life satisfaction.

Who they are

Lucas is listed at the Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, on the 2013 paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, written with Nicole M. Lawless. They linked the answers of 1,071,290 respondents to a national health survey run between 2005 and 2009 to the weather in each respondent's metropolitan area on the day of interview.

Most weather conditions were unrelated to life satisfaction, and the few significant effects were very small. Their conclusion was that the weather does not reliably affect judgements of life satisfaction, though they could not rule out effects entirely. They also noted that the classic 1983 study of weather and mood had 84 participants in total, 14 to a group.

Key papers

Lucas, R. E., & Lawless, N. M. (2013). "Does life seem better on a sunny day? Examining the association between daily weather conditions and life satisfaction judgments." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 104(5), 872-884. doi:10.1037/a0032124.

Key ideas

See Mood as Information.

Sources

  1. Lucas and Lawless (2013), full text read, 12 October 2026.