Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio, Hey brain Stuff Lauren Vogelbon. Here in the early part of the twenty first century, psychologist Dr David A. Ellis performed possibly the shortest experiment in the history of the social sciences. He gathered sixty randomly selected test subjects, invited them into his office one by one, and asked them this fateful question, what day is today? That's it? Thank you, please sign
the release form on the way out. Done so, what could Ellis possibly learn from asking people the day of the week? A heck of a lot, as it turns out. Using this simple experiment and others, Ellis was trying to decode the complex psychology of time, and even to help answer the age old question wait is it Wednesday or Thursday? Because although each week day is twenty four hours long, they're far from equal from a psychological standpoint. We spoke with Elis via phone back in from the University of
Lincoln in the UK. He said, when you ask people about Monday and Friday, they have a lot to tell you, and those words evoke very strong emotions, whereas when you ask them about the middling days, people tend to draw a blank. Asked to free associate about Monday, Ellis's test subjects wrote strongly negative words like tired, boring, early, and rubbish, it being the UK after all, and when asked to describe Friday, they came up with wildly positive words like fun, friends, party,
and someone unexpectedly bacon. When asked about the rest of the week, people struggled to come up with anything at all. Tuesday, for some is like a Monday hangover, long and busy topped the list, but the description most people came up with for Wednesday was simply middle. There are even a lot more songs about Mondays and Fridays than other days
of the week. Consider New Orders, Blue Monday, The Mamas and the Papa's Monday, Monday, The Bengals, Manic Monday, The Cures Friday, I'm in Love, Katie Perry's Last Friday Night, Rascal Flats Friday. Though, of course, let's not discount the midweek brilliance of the Rolling Stones, Ruby Tuesday. But Ellis pointed out that there can be serious unintended consequences to these strong and weak psychological associations with certain days of
the week. He explained suicide rates are higher at the start of the week, for example, and stocks perform better on Friday. Missed medical appointments also peak at the start of the week in the United States. These can be a costly inconvenience for doctors and patients, but they can be costly to the whole community for state run health
systems like in the UK. The better we understand the psychological biases toward different days of the week, Ellis says, the better weekend tailor interventions and design subtle nudges, it might have significant societal payoff. In a previous study, for example, Ellis found that working people are much more likely to
miss Monday doctor's appointments than retirees. The health system could save loads of money by booking retirees at the beginning of the week and US working stiffs on Fridays, Which brings us back to the original question what days it today? When Alice asked that question, he timed each subject's response on Mondays and Fridays. He discovered people gave the correct answer twice as fast as people asked on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. Some midweek folks couldn't think of the day
at all. Given the strong if opposing psychological associations with Monday and Friday. It's not surprising that people are more aware of those days. It seems the rest of the work week can get lost in the shuffle. Today's episode was written by Dave Ruse and produced by Tyler Klang. Or More on this and lots of other timely topics, visit how stuffworks dot com. Brain Stuff is production of
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