Does Life Seem Better on a Sunny Day? Examining the Association Between Daily Weather Conditions and Life Satisfaction Judgments

Weather conditions have been shown to affect a broad range of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. The current study examines whether these effects extend to life satisfaction judgments. We examine the association between daily weather conditions and life satisfaction in a representative sample of over 1 million Americans from all 50 states who were assessed (in a cross-sectional design) over a 5-year period. Most daily weather conditions were unrelated to life satisfaction judgments, and those effects that were significant reflect very small effects that were only detectable because of the extremely high power of these analyses. These results show that weather does not reliably affect judgments of life satisfaction.