It has been said that everyone complains about the weather, but no one ever does anything about it. This may be true: What is also true is that people do many things, some of them subconscious or unexpected, because of the weather.
In Rainmakers: Why Bad Weather Means Good Productivity (PDF, 80KB), an article published in the May 2014 issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology, Jooa Julia Lee, Francesca Gino, and Bradley R. Staats explored the effect that rainy weather has on how much gets done at work. As the title implies, a bad day outside does not directly translate to a bad one inside.
Most people assume that good weather leads to increased productivity: In an initial survey, 82% of those queried by Lee et al. made this prediction. However, the authors hypothesized that good weather conditions lead workers to experience distracting thoughts about potential outdoor activities and that worker productivity on tasks requiring sustained attention and focus will drop as the salience of outdoor activity options increases.
Lee et al. conducted four studies to test their hypotheses.
- In the first, they analyzed the link between weather conditions and productivity by comparing the productivity data of Japanese home loan mortgage-processing workers with weather reports from the same period of time. They found that for every additional inch of rain that fell, the time workers needed to complete a transaction also fell 1.3%.
- A second study, conducted online with workers in the United States, involved participants completing a timed proofreading task, answering questions about their state emotions and the current weather conditions, and providing their zip codes. The weather report corresponding to each participant's zip code was retrieved and confirmed against the participant's description. Bad weather was found to be associated with increased speed and accuracy.
- The third study, also conducted online, confirmed that good weather increased the salience and attractiveness of outdoor activities for workers.
- The fourth study, which was conducted in a laboratory, included manipulations of both the weather conditions (i.e., whether the study was conducted during good or bad weather) and primes (i.e., whether participants were shown outdoor activity options). Participants in each of the conditions of the 2 X 2 design completed a data-entry task and answered questions about their state emotions, perception of the current weather conditions, and demographic characteristics. Bad weather was found to increase data-entry speed, but salient outdoor activity options, regardless of the actual weather, increased cognitive distractions (i.e., like good weather did) and thus reduced productivity.
Knowing the effect of weather on worker concentration could lead employers to maximize employee effectiveness by saving work assignments requiring increased focus for days, such as rainy ones, with fewer distractions. Lee et al.'s research on weather-related work distractions provides an interesting new direction for office work assignments and future productivity studies.
Citation:
Lee, J. J., Gino, F., & Staats, B. R. (2014). Rainmakers: Why bad weather means good productivity. Journal of Applied Psychology, 99, 504–513. doi: 10.1037/a0035559
Note: This article is in the I/O Psychology & Management topic area. View more articles in the I/O Psychology & Management topic area.