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The temperature of emotions.
Francisco Barbosa Escobar1, Carlos Velasco2, Kosuke Motoki3
1Department of Food Science, Faculty of Science and Technology, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark.
Plos One
|June 3, 2021
Summary
People explicitly and implicitly link temperature to emotions. Colder temperatures correlate with negative, low-arousal feelings, while warmer temperatures associate with positive, high-arousal emotions across languages.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Cognitive Science
- Linguistics
Background:
- Emotions and temperature are linked via embodied cognition, evident in everyday language.
- A systematic analysis of temperature-emotion associations across explicit and implicit levels is lacking.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate explicit and implicit associations between temperature concepts and emotion adjectives.
- To explore cross-linguistic variations in these associations.
Main Methods:
- Experiment 1: Explicit ratings of emotion adjectives (circumplex model) with temperature concepts (0°C-40°C) by 403 multilingual speakers.
- Experiment 2: Implicit Association Tests (IATs) linking temperature words (cold, hot) with valence and arousal dimensions in English speakers.
Main Results:
- Explicitly, 0°C/10°C linked to negative/low-arousal, 20°C to positive/low-medium arousal, 30°C to positive/high arousal, and 40°C to high arousal (positive/negative valence).
- Implicitly, 'hot' associated with positive/high-arousal emotions, and 'cold' with negative/low-arousal emotions.
Conclusions:
- Temperature-emotion associations exist at both explicit and implicit levels.
- These associations are consistent across different languages and cultures.
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