Do you live for the release date of pumpkin spice lattes? Are you always counting down the days until fall foliage is at its peak? Even while sitting on a beach, would you be daydreaming about your coziest, comfiest sweaters? That fall obsession of yours (and ours) can be explained by science. So go ahead and curl up with a mug of white hot chocolate and a handful of those sugar cookies with the pumpkins on them and let’s dive into it.
The number one reason a lot of us are obsessed with fall? It’s been romanticized our entire lives. For most of us anyway. Think about it, for years fall signified the start of a new school year and with that came new clothes, new school supplies, and well, new everything in our little worlds. And when that’s all we knew for 18 years, old habits die hard.
Another reason we love fall so much is that we fall back into our old routines. During summer kids are out of school, teachers are out of school, vacations are happening, and life just moves a little slower, but in the fall we all go back to our usual routines and a lot of us find comfort in the ordinary.
Speaking of comfort, it’s no wonder so many of us love the idea of fall coming back around because what do we associate it with? Comfy sweaters, boots, hot coffees, cozy Netflix binges, fires, the smell of baked goods. Fall is cozy time and who doesn’t love that?
The change in weather alone presents some mental health benefits that would naturally make the season more appealing too. Cooler temperatures paired with fall foliage encourage us to get outside, and an increase in physical activity combined with enjoying the great outdoors is connected to happiness, well-being, and an overall sense of a greater life purpose.
Here’s one for our firm believers in art therapy (go ahead and include us in that one) the colors that you’re often surrounded by in fall, warmer tones of red, yellow, and orange, are naturally associated with comfort, optimism, and cheerfulness.
Last, but certainly not least, we can’t leave out the flavors of fall. You’ve got your pumpkin spice, your apple cider, your cinnamon on all the things, but why do we love them so much? NBC News interviewed Dr. John McGann, a sensory neuroscientist at Rutgers, to understand why these flavors have such a cult following. “About 70 percent of our [perception] of taste is retronasal smell and then maybe 25 percent of it is true taste,” McGann told NBC. “Smell anatomically has a more direct connection to classical memory regions in the brain.”