Image credit: PixabayAlready aware of the relationship between light and behaviors such as hunger, sex drive and sleep, researchers from the University of Sydney are now exploring the relationship between light exposure and its impact on financial decision making.

Researchers observed the financial behaviors of over 2,500 study participants in relation to luminance, which is the measure of the amount of light falling on the earth’s surface due to factors such as cloud cover, humidity and time of year/day.

According to the University of Sydney’s Associate Professor and study author Agnieszka Tymula, "On the days with higher light intensity, people made worse decisions and they were more inconsistent in the choices that they made."

"Overall, the effects are not of an enormous magnitude, but nevertheless they are consistent, significant, and strong enough to be expected to have significant effects on financial markets."

As part of their research, Professor Tymula along with co-author, Professor Paul Glimcher of New York University asked participants to make decisions concerning 40 financial scenarios.

In each scenario, participants could elect to receive a certain payout of $5, or a lottery option with the possibility of receiving nothing, or a cash amount between $5 and $125.

The response data was then combined with luminance measurements from a nearby weather station.

The researchers determined that luminance not only affected participant’s financial decision making, higher and lower levels of light also affected the levels of risk participants could endure, their comfort level with decision making during uncertain situations and the consistency of their decisions over a range of scenarios.

The study is published in the journal PLOS ONE.