Experiencing Physical Warmth Promotes Interpersonal Warmth

By John A. Bargh. Science, 2008

1,174 citations recorded by the source corpus.

“Warmth” is the most powerful personality trait in social judgment, and attachment theorists have stressed the importance of warm physical contact with caregivers during infancy for healthy relationships in adulthood. Intriguingly, recent research in humans points to the involvement of the insula in the processing of both physical temperature and interpersonal warmth (trust) information. Accordingly, we hypothesized that experiences of physical warmth (or coldness) would increase feelings of interpersonal warmth (or coldness), without the person's awareness of this influence. In study 1, participants who briefly held a cup of hot (versus iced) coffee judged a target person as having a “warmer” personality (generous, caring); in study 2, participants holding a hot (versus cold) therapeutic pad were more likely to choose a gift for a friend instead of for themselves.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1a3709e5fe19c5703a8b5b40a2f3449c54ed9848

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Citations in the corpus

A link between the systems: functional differentiation and integration within the human insula revealed by meta-analysis (2010, positive): “Sensory stimuli, for example, have an immediate effect on emotions (Chen 2007; Craig 2002; Williams and Bargh 2008 ), which is in particular reflected by the James-Lange theory and Damasio’s ‘‘somatic marker’’ hypothesis (Damasio 1994; James 1894; Lange 1885).”
Figurative framing: Shaping public discourse through metaphor, hyperbole, and irony (2016, positive): “For instance, a famous series of experiments has focused on the conceptual metaphor “affection is warmth,” which conceptualizes interpersonal affection as physical heath (Williams & Bargh, 2008).”
Building long-term empathy: A large-scale comparison of traditional and virtual reality perspective-taking (2018, positive): “Past studies show 180 that physical movement can improve a participant’s performance while completing cognitive 181 tasks, and that the physical experience of a particular environment can have an effect on both 182 perceptions and behaviors [45-46].”
Multisensory design: Reaching out to touch the consumer (2011, neutral): “Science, 322, 606–607.”
Suggestion, Cognition, and Behavior (2012, positive): “When subjects were given a hot cup of coffee, they judged a target person’s personality to be warmer than did subjects who were given iced coffee (Williams & Bargh, 2008a).”
Criminal versus HUMINT Interrogations: The Importance of Psychological Science to Improving Interrogative Practice (2010, positive): “For example, holding a warm cup of coffee can increase feelings of warmth towards a stranger (Williams & Bargh, 2008), and the mere presence of weapons produces aggressive behaviors (Anderson, Benjamin, & Bartholow, 1998).”
Metaphorical framing in political discourse through words vs. concepts: a meta-analysis (2019, neutral): “For instance, a large body of experimental studies on the embodiment of conceptual metaphors such as affect ion i s heat (Williams & Bargh, 2008), importance i s we ight, (Chandler, Reinhard, & Schwarz, 2012), and moral ity i s cleanl iness (Lee & Schwarz, 2010) has demonstrated that conceptual…”
Warmth and conformity: The effects of ambient temperature on product preferences and financial decisions☆ (2014, neutral): “Past research on the association between physical temperature and social temperature has primarily focused on affiliation-based judgments, such as friendliness, loneliness, helping, or a liking for romantic movies (Hong & Sun, 2012; Williams & Bargh, 2008; Zhong & Leonardelli, 2008).”
Warmth, spatial proximity, and social attachment: The embodied perception of a social metaphor (2012, positive): “Five participants were excluded after freely volunteering their foreknowledge of Williams and Bargh's (2008) hot/cold cup manipulation.”
An integrative review of sensory marketing: Engaging the senses to affect perception, judgment and behavior (2012, positive): “Additional credence for haptics and inter-personal behavior comes from an experiment that examines the effect of temperature on social judgment and gift giving (Williams & Bargh, 2008).”
The influences of restaurant menu font style, background color, and physical weight on consumers’ perceptions (2016, neutral): “As previously stated, grounded cognition theory relies upon the notion that sensory stimuli can impact dissimilar, but associated, evaluations (Barsalou, 2008; Lakoff and Johnson, 1980; Williams and Bargh, 2008).”