Who Blames the Moon for Poor Sleep? An Exploratory Online Survey

The belief that the moon disturbs sleep is widespread, but the factors associated with it remain poorly understood. I therefore examined how frequently poor sleep is attributed to moon phases, whether this varied across the lunar cycle, and which personal and environmental factors were associated with “moon blaming”. Data were derived from an ongoing online survey. At the time of analysis, 1815 participants had completed a 16-item questionnaire assessing sleep quality, sleep duration, sleep timing on workdays and free days, alarm clock use, environmental and personal sleep-disturbing factors, residential setting, age, gender, attention to lunar phases, and whether the moon was perceived as a cause of poor sleep. The primary outcome was endorsement of the moon as a sleep-disturbing factor. Logistic regression with stepwise Akaike information criterion selection was used to identify the strongest predictors of attributing the moon for poor sleep. Questionnaire timing was also examined across the lunar cycle. Among environmental factors, the moon was the most frequently endorsed cause of poor sleep (36%), followed by outdoor temperature (31%), indoor noise (26%), and bad weather (22%). Rumination was the most commonly reported personal factor (73%), but it did not predict moon attribution. Instead, the strongest correlates were weather-related sleep complaints, tracking lunar phases, age, and gender, with endorsement increasing with age and being more common among women. Moon-related complaints also peaked during the week after the full moon. These findings suggest that perceived lunar effects on sleep are shaped, at least in part, by attributional and expectation-related processes.