Ask somebody what day of the week it is on a Monday and he or she will almost certainly reply correctly with a bit of exasperation in their breath. Ask them on a Friday and they’ll likely be right again – hopefully a little more enthusiastic, though. Ask them what day of the week it is on a Tuesday and well, your chances of getting the correct reply drop.
In fact, most people are confused about what day of the week it is four out of 10 times. So why are we mixing up our days of the week? In short, because the weekend rocks, Mondays suck, and everything in-between is just a waiting game.
Psychologists from the universities of Lincoln, York and Hertfordshire conducted a study on why we mix days of the week up so often and concluded that we have an artificial seven-day cycle and assign each day of the week a characteristic. Some of those characteristics are just a little more difficult to distinguish than others. Friday and Saturday obviously have good time party characteristics while Monday pretty much has all the charisma of a wet towel.
While Monday might not be all that fun, we do associate a lot of things with it: mostly school and work, but those are two pretty big components of most people’s lives. This is also likely why there are so many more songs that reference Friday and Monday. Important things happen at the beginning and end of the workweek. The Cure’s “Friday I’m in Love” just doesn’t sound as catchy if you swap it out with Wednesday.
So, just how did the researchers assess how exciting each day of the week is?
Volunteers were asked which day it was – and timed while they came up with their answer. The volunteers had a much quicker response time on Mondays and Fridays, answering twice as quickly than when it was a Wednesday. The research also showed how often we get the day wrong. Overall, almost 40 percent of those quizzed were a day out and most of these mistakes occurred in the middle of the week. If they were quizzed on a federal holiday, their incorrect answer rate jumped by nearly 50 percent and people said they felt a day behind.
People also assigned buzzwords to certain days of the week. Mondays were typically associated with “hectic”, “tired”, and “boring.” Friday of course was much more positive with words like “party” and “freedom” being tossed around.
