Moral values are the principles that guide a person’s perceptions of good and bad, and right and wrong. They shape our prejudices, political ideologies and many other consequential attitudes and actions.

It’s tempting to assume that a person’s moral values are stable across time and circumstances, and to some extent they are — but not entirely. Moral values are malleable and can sometimes change depending on the specific thoughts, feelings and motivations that arise in different situations.

Our research examined whether moral values might change with the seasons, too.

Seasons are characterized not just by changes in the weather, but also by many additional changes in our surroundings and the rhythms of our lives. These may include spring cleaning, spending more time with family in summer, back-to-school shopping in the autumn or preparing for winter holidays.

Consequently, changes in the seasons lead to changes in the things that people think, feel and do. Most people know that seasonal changes in the weather have effects on people’s moods, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Psychological research has revealed seasonal effects on attention and memory, generosity, colour preferences and many other things.

And so, in our recent research, we investigated whether there might also be seasonal cycles in the moral values that people endorse.

We examined five........

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