I have been following this idea very closely for many years now and believe there are many quite visible signs illustrating the going shift in social mood from peak positive to more negative. Below are a few of the more recent signposts suggestive of a very deep and important shift in social mood.

Consumer Culture & the Death of Luxury

"The great, secret and special American guilt of owning nothing, noting at all, in the one land where ownership and virtue are one. Guilt that lay crouched behind every billboard which gave each man his commandments; for each man here had failed the billboards all down the line."
- Nelson Algren, "The Man with the Golden Arm"

There's nothing new about challenges to consumerism. Nelson Algren's fiction, much of it written in the 1940s and 1950s, consistently challenged accepted ideas about consumption and social norms while painting harrowing portraits of individuals society would rather pretend did not exist. Social mood determines how much, if any, of those anti-consumption messages and views are embraced and endorsed by the crowd.

Take a recent article from the New York Times, "In Hard Times, No More Fancy Pants." The article is chronicling the recent change in attitudes toward displays of wealth, opulence and glamour. "There’s a shift to get away from glitz,” [restaurant designer Orit] Kaufman said. “I’m almost starting to feel that luxury is a dirty word.”

Fashion

Could there be a fashion accessory that has been more of a beneficiary of lingering bullish sentiment and the remnants of positive social mood than Crocs (CROX) footwear? The bright colors, the apparently state-of-the-art construction materials. So why has the company seen its stock collapse from $74 to less than $1 per share?

During periods of peak positive social mood, fashion is dominated by bright colors, flamboyant and even skimpy attire. Few fashion trends capture as much of those traits as Crocs footwear. However, unfortunately for Crocs, the race is now on to see if they can shift gears and survive long enough to catch up to the transition in social mood.

A transition to a negative social mood will entail a shift away from bright colors in fashion, more austere color schemes and even anti-fashion.

Film/Media

Look for 2009 to be a dark, apocalyptic year for films. Because films take time to greenlight and produce they can provide stark evidence of social mood appetites. It is no accident that Will Smith's "I Am Legend," a remake of the dark apocalyptic Charlton Heston film, "The Omega Man," appeared just as the subprime debacle and credit crisis began unfolding,

Coming up in 2009 are two even darker films, "2012" about the end of the world, and "The Road," based on Cormac McCarthy's grim, post-apocalyptic book of the same name. From the increasing popularity and intensity of torture-related horror films to content featuring cynical, dark and brooding themes, the shift in social mood has created a larger appetite for media reflecting underlying negative trends.

Food/Beverages and Consumables 

Forbes called it "Bottlemania." BusinessWeek recently thrust the issue into it's so-called "Debate Room,": "Bottled Water IS a Big Drain, Pro or Con?" New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg intends to co-sponsor a resolution to prohibit city spending on bottled water. Meanwhile, Americans drank more than 30,000,000,000 bottles of single-serve water last year. What's going on here? After all, the bottled water industry is, technically, 30 years old. Suddenly, bottled water is a ripoff? A waste? Or worse, dangerous? What changed?

One thing. Social mood.

Make no mistake, there is nothing wrong with tap water, and there never has been. As the BusinessWeek article points out, we pay up to 4,000 times more for bottled water than tap water, and more than three times what we pay for gasoline; all this for water that is far less regulated and which frequently tests worse than tap water in both taste and purity. Pepsi's (PEP) Aquafina label bottled water is actually tap water. So is Coca-Cola's (KO) Dasani bottled water.

So why do we suddenly care now? Simple, as social mood continues to darken and turn against symbols of excessive wealth and consumption, the former icons of bull market glee and prosperity begin to tarnish in the public eye.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with bottled water other than its cost over tap water. For 30 years it's been fine to pay for the convenience and fashionable appearance of water in a bottle. Now, however, it's something to rail against as mood shifts. Social mood will seek to portray this as a war against waste and excessive cost, but it's actually grounded in the psychological need to vilify the old signs of overconsumption in order to accept the reality of cutting back. The acceptance of that reality is easier if we are able to manufacture something "wrong" with that which is just beyond our economic reach.

So sit back with a tall glass of refreshing tap water and enjoy the rush to disassociate from yet another fading idol of the bull market.