Feel the Heat

Here in Toronto, we’ve been enjoying an exceedingly mild winter. It’s the kind of winter where you forget your toque at home and it doesn’t really matter. Where snowflakes, if there are any at all, settle themselves on the ground sporadically and with a wry smile.

That’s why the last few days of weather have been less than welcome here. Biting wind. Icy temperatures. Actual genuine 100% Canadian snow. And a deep, widespread feeling of distrust.

Eh?

This surprised me, too. But research has shown that when the physical temperature around us drops, we tend to be more suspicious of other people’s motivations. Conversely, when we get a blast of heat, we increase our trust and positivity towards others. Apparently, our systems for monitoring body temperature and controlling emotion are linked, and the warm or cold air around us can influence our feelings. (This field of science, in case it comes up at Trivia Pursuit, is known as embodied cognition.)

You can imagine all the creative experiments the researchers are coming up with to prove it. In one test, a “stranger” (sneaky scientist) asked someone to hold her cup for a minute while she wrote something down. If the cup was steaming hot, the person holding it was more likely to think of the stranger as a warm, kind individual. But if the cup was icy cold, they thought she was a bit of a – well, we won’t put that in print.

I may be misrepresenting the science somewhat. Perhaps the effects were a bit subtler, but they were quite unmistakable. So why has nature wired us to feel more connected to each other in the presence of higher temperatures? One theory is that if we trust people who make us feel warmth, we’re more likely to cuddle with them, hence saving the energy it would otherwise take our bodies to fight off chill. Hey, if it’s good enough for penguins…