Your boyfriend thinks you’re overreacting when you get upset about him not responding to your text—or you don’t understand why he’s so pissed when you’re 15 minutes late to dinner. Whatever the point of contention, two studies published in the journal Acta Psychologica have revealed a unique way to help you see eye-to-eye: People exposed to cooler temperatures were better at comprehending someone else’s POV.
In the first study, researchers had 81 undergrads hold a cup of either warm or cold water for two minutes. Afterward, the participants read stories designed to test their ability to understand another person’s perspective. For example, in one story a guy’s friends recommend a movie. He watches the movie, hates it, and then, oddly, emails his friends telling them he thought it was fantastic. Participants were asked whether the friends would take the email seriously or think he was joking. Those who’d been holding the cool cup were more likely to conclude that they’d take his comment at face value. They were significantly more successful at ignoring their personal intel and putting themselves in the shoes of the fictitious friends, who had no knowledge that he disliked the film.
The second study of 67 students began the same way, with the cups of water. Participants then read a story about a girl whose friend had hidden an object from her. (Half the participants knew where it was hidden; the other half were in the dark.) When asked where the girl would look for the object first, those who held the hot cup tended to suggest she’d search in the right spot, whereas those who’d been exposed to cold water understood that she’d have no idea where it was.
So, what’s going on here? When you try to understand where another person is coming from, your initial reaction is to consider how you would feel in that situation, a process called egocentric anchoring. “It’s helpful to start that way,” says study coauthor Claudia Sassenrath, PhD, who did the research along with colleagues Kai Sassenberg and Gun R. Semin. “But then you need to take it a step further, by accounting for the differences between you—age, past experience, gender, etc.” And that requires distance and perspective.
Previous research has discovered a link between physical warmth and emotional warmth—people in cozy rooms deemed others to be friendlier and more similar to themselves than those in chilly rooms, who sensed greater separation and less common ground. “We may have learned this as babies,” says Sassenrath. “When our mother held us close, we felt warm, soothed, and connected.” A cold temp, on the other hand, functions as a psychological cue that you and another person are different, which can keep you from projecting your own feelings onto them and thus better understand where they’re coming from.
The next time there’s tension between you and your S.O., open up a bottle of chilled white wine while you work it through. Or take a friend who just went through a breakup out for iced coffee instead of hot tea before you give her advice. You might even try turning the thermostat down a few degrees before asking your boss for a promotion. “Although there are others factors involved that could affect the outcome of these scenarios, research does suggest that if you keep everything else constant, a cooler temperature might help in situations where perspective-taking is involved,” says Sassenrath.
photo: iStockphoto/Thinkstock
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