A History of Weather and the Social Sciences: Contributions of Edwin Grant Dexter

A History of Weather and the Social Sciences: Contributions of Edwin Grant Dexter

The research in this project examines some of the historical roots of the societal impacts work in atmospheric science through the contributions of Edwin Grant Dexter (1868-1938).  Dexter was an engineer, psychologist, and educator who completed one of the first systematic studies of the relationships between weather conditions and psychological and social functioning.  The results of this work appeared in Dexter's (1904) book, Weather Influences, which had a forward written by meteorologist Cleveland Abbe.  Dexter's investigations are significant for historical reasons because he was the first person following the formal emergence of psychology as an academic discipline in the late 1800's to investigate weather, psychology and social relationships.  Further, Dexter utilized comparatively large samples of adults and children along with data from the U. S. Weather Bureau offices in Denver, Colorado and New York City to describe these relationships and to formulate a psychophysiological theory of weather influences.  Dexter's scholarship is significant at the current time given the growing interest of the atmospheric science community in societal impacts. 

Dexter's Weather Influences

Background.  The first 54 pages of Weather Influences were devoted to a description of weather folklore and literature.  This examination appears to have served two purposes, the first which was to legitimize posing the questions of:  to what extent does weather influence psychological and social processes and how might these influences operate?  Second, such a review made it clear to Dexter that no empirically-based studies of weather influences had been undertaken.  Given the recent emergence of large-n paradigms in psychology and sociology, conducting empirical studies of weather influences using the new methodology seemed to be a logical next-step for Dexter. 

Populations and Variables Studied.  Dexter studied a range of social and behavioral variables that could be influenced by the weather; These variables are summarized in Table 1.  To examine the relationship of the social or psychological variable, Dexter tabled the occurrence of each variable (e. g., assaults) according to the meteorological parameter under consideration and determined the relative frequency of the occurrence within each interval of the variable.  For each meteorological variable, Dexter differenced the expectancy and occurrence curves to ascertain whether the social or psychological variable under analysis was more or less likely to occur under the given conditions.  Thus, the entries in Table 1 represent qualitative interpretations of the data and the degree and/or direction of the relationship between the social or psychological variable and a particular meteorological variable.

Citation Analysis: Legacy of Dexter's Weather Influences

A search of multiple databases along with a search of Google Books, revealed that Dexter's Weather Influences has been cited in approximately 250 books and professional journal articles. This figure represents a lower limit because not all sources that may have cited a book published in 1904 have been incorporated into the searchable scholarly databases.  Regarding the citation trends of Weather Influences over time, a peak of citations appears between 1910 and approximately 1935.  Although such a peak in citations is expected for many scholarly works, followed by a gradual and steady decrease over, it is noteworthy that approximately 18% of the identified citations occurred from 1980 to 2010.  This result suggests that Dexter's work continues to be of interest, value, and use to researchers and writers.  In this regard Weather Influences seems to have become somewhat of a classic reference in being the first systematic contribution to examine the effects of weather on individual and social behavior. 

With respect to the scholarly disciplines and the scope of projects citing Weather Influences, the modal areas have consistently involved education, human geography, criminology, sociology (general), and health.  Citations by education-related works and projects appeared to peak a little earlier in the time following publication of the book.  The citations from the literatures in criminology, sociology, and health have been somewhat steadier across time and reflect contemporary interest in the ways that weather can affect human psychological and behavioral functioning. 

The most noteworthy feature of Weather Influences that is responsible for its continued citation and use by contemporary scholars has to do with the theory Dexter developed to explain the nature of the weather's influences on people.  That is, Dexter broadly theorized that weather can directly and indirectly affect the emotional processes of people in various ways and thus exert an influence on their behavior. Such relationships continue to be of importance in understanding how people use weather information to make decisions (e. g., whether or not to evacuate or to take cover from severe/extreme weather) that may bear upon their survival.  In this regard, Dexter's Weather Influences constitutes an interesting and important piece of the burgeoning societal impacts work in atmospheric science.

Table 1 Selected Meteorological and Psychological Variables Examined in Weather Influences
Variable	N	Temp. (°F)	Rel. Hum. (%)	Baro. Press. (inches)	Wind (Miles)	Prec. (yes/no)	Cloud Cover
Attendance in selected NY public schools (1895-1896)	108,020	Higher (warm)	NP	Lower at Extremes	Lower	None	Clear
Child deportment in NY public schools – number of demerits (1895-1896)	14,083	Lower at Extremes	Lower	Lower	Lower at Extremes	None	Clear
Child deportment in Denver public schools – number of demerits (1882-1896)		Higher at Extremes	Lower	Higher at Extremes	Higher	None	Clear
Assault and Battery in New York City (1891-1897)	39,761	Higher (warm)	Lower	Lower	Lower at Extremes	None	Fair & P. Cldy
Murders in Denver (1884-1896)	184	Higher (warm)	Lower	Lower	Higher	Rain	Cloudy
Deaths in New York City (1886-87)	74,793	Higher (hot)	Higher	ND	Higher at Extremes	Rain	Cloudy
Clerical Errors discovered in records of national banks in New York City (1896-97)	3,698	Higher (hot)	Higher at Extremes	Higher	Lower	Rain	Cloudy
Note:  The qualifying terms in the table cells convey the values/trends of meteorological conditions that were observed to produce the outcomes described in the left-hand column of the table.  NP indicates that No Patterns were observed in the relationship between the social and meteorological variables. In the second column, N conveys the size of the sample.