Friday People Angrier Than Monday People, Study Says

According to a new report, anger and our perception of time are closely linked. Not only can merely thinking about moving through time induce anger, but apparently Friday people tend to have more anger than Monday people. So which are you? The study provides a simple test.

In determining Monday versus Friday molds, the study asked participants to say which day of the week a meeting had changed to after researchers told them that a meeting originally scheduled for Wednesday had since moved forward two days. (In this case, "forward" could be interpreted in either direction.) Those who answered Friday were determined to be people who otherwise thought of themselves as moving through time, while those who thought the new meeting date was Monday were generally more inclined to think of time as passing them by.

The researchers also performed other anger/time tests, such as presenting students with a computer screen marked with the days of the week. "Commands were given that either provoked thoughts about moving through time, away from the participant (e.g. a meeting has moved forward two days from Sunday to Wednesday—please highlight the new day on the screen), or thoughts about time moving towards the participant (e.g. a shift down the screen, towards the participant from Wednesday to Sunday)." The study again found that those who think about their movement through time, a.k.a. the Friday crowd, ranked themselves as feeling angrier than those for whom time moved towards them.

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