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campus news
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Alan Stewart, an associate professor of counseling psychology in the
College of Education, conducts research to discover the different ways
weather affects people in a new field of study he calls behavioral
climatology. (Photo by Dot Paul)
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Minding the weather
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College of Education
professor seeks to develop new field of study involving psychology,
meteorology
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By Angela Hains
anicole7@uga.edu
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For UGA faculty
member Alan Stewart, it’s all about the weather.
Stewart, an associate professor of counseling psychology in UGA’s
College of Education, hopes the research he is currently pursuing will
lead to the development of a new field of academic study involving
psychology and climatology.
Welcome to the world of behavioral climatology.
Presently, there is no such field or course offered at any university
in the country, but Stewart’s ambition and research may be about to
change that. In January, Stewart was invited to present his research at
the 86th annual American Meteorological Society in Atlanta.
“Presenting at the conference was an honor because I have always had a
passion for meteorology, and being able to combine my counseling
psychology background with climatology is the best of both worlds,”
Stewart says.
So, what is behavioral climatology? The term refers to the way in which
weather and climate affect psychological variables such as behaviors,
moods and thoughts.
“Behavioral climatology is closely related to applied
climatology—although, how weather and climate affect people both in
terms of their mental and physical health, and from a safety prevention
standpoint, has not really been studied,” Stewart says.
The benefit of researching the subject, he says, is that if one is
aware of how climate affects oneself it allows that individual to take
a preventative approach to his or her health. Knowing that you are more
inclined to become depressed when it is constantly raining may prevent
you from taking a job in Seattle, he says.
Stewart experienced this himself when he worked for a few years in
Florida where he discovered he desperately missed the passing of the
four seasons.
“Christmas was not what I was used to because it wasn’t cold outside
and there were people in flip flops and tank tops headed to the beach,
instead of families building snowmen in their front yard,” he says.
“Had I known that my ultimate happiness was not warm weather and
sunshine 365 days a year, I might have altered my path in life.”
Surprisingly, Stewart says not everyone’s perfect weather day is
sunshine with no trace of clouds in the sky.
“For instance, I do my best work on a chilly day when it’s raining
outside,” he says.
Most of us become very accustomed to what we grew up with, according to
Stewart. Even though physically we are capable of adjusting to a new
environment, there will most likely be mood changes as a consequence of
climate change.
While some may doubt the significant role weather can play in affecting
a person’s mood, Stewart says that it may not be just the weather per
se, but rather, what ripple effect the weather has on your day.
Chances are, if you are inside all day and don’t have a job or
activities that you enjoy outside, the weather may not be a concern to
you, he says. But something as simple as a rainy day can cause more
accidents on the road. This may not be a big deal if you live five
minutes from your work, but if you commute from Athens to Atlanta every
day, your one-hour commute then becomes a two- to three-hour commute,
which could put anyone in a foul mood.
While that may not surprise anyone, preliminary survey results indicate
some unusual findings when looking at events that spur individuals to
become more active in seeking out weather information. It seems as
though people have to experience three or more severe weather events
before they begin to make an effort to seek out weather related
information or become more in tune with sensing and observing weather,
according to Stewart.
Continuing his research to discover the different ways weather affects
people, Stewart has collected nearly 1,000 Internet questionnaires from
UGA students. To gauge the importance of weather, the self-report
survey asks students: how often they seek weather information from
media sources and how frequently the weather causes their mood to
change.
Stewart is applying for grants to finance a larger study that would
allow him to test subjects other than college students.
Stewart, who joined the UGA faculty in 2002, has established his line
of research in the areas of death, loss and trauma. His specific
research interests involve death notification following fatal vehicular
crashes, death notification training and the psychological effects of
surviving serious crashes. He also has an interest in measurement and
evaluation and has created several scales for use with people who have
experienced crashes: the Driving and Riding Avoidance Scale and the
Driving and Riding Cautiousness Scale. Stewart also has studied family
emotional processes and the ways in which language can be used to
characterize one’s family of origin experiences or to construct healing
narratives in the aftermath of a trauma.
Stewart came to UGA from the University of Florida where he was an
assistant professor of psychology from 1997 to 2002. He received his
Ph.D. in counseling psychology from UGA in 1994 and completed his
postdoctoral work in counseling and psychotherapy at HUB Counseling in
Tucker, and at the University of Memphis. |
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