This possibility intrigued two researchers—Amar Cheema of the University of Virginia and Vanessa M. Patrick of the University of Houston—so they carried out an innovative study of real-world behavior: they gathered sales data for various types of lottery games in St. Louis County for a full year, then looked for differences in sales patterns as a function of each day’s temperature. The results were striking. Sales for scratch tickets, which require buyers to choose between many different options, fell by $594 with every 1° Fahrenheit increase in temperature. Sales for lotto tickets, which require fewer decisions on the part of the buyer, were not affected.
The researchers decided to test this apparent link between weather and complex decision-making in the lab by performing a series of experiments comparing participants’ cognitive performance at two seemingly unremarkable temperatures: 67° and 77° Fahrenheit. People tend to be most comfortable at around 72° Fahrenheit, so each temperature represented just a 5° deviation from maximum comfort.
Despite this minimal deviation in temperature, the researchers found remarkable differences in cognitive functioning. In one lab study, participants were asked to proofread an article while they were in either a warm (77°) or a cool (67°) room. Participants in warm rooms performed significantly worse than those in cool rooms, failing to identify almost half of the spelling and grammatical errors (those in cool rooms, on the hand, only missed a quarter of the mistakes). These results suggest that even simple cognitive tasks can be adversely affected by excessive ambient warmth.
In a second study, the researchers showed similar effects for more complex cognitive calculations. In this study, another group of participants were asked to choose between two cell phone plans, again in either a warm or a cool room. One plan looked more attractive on the surface, but was actually more expensive; simple patterns of decision-making would therefore lead participants to choose the more expensive plan, whereas more complex analyses would lead participants to correctly choose the more cost-effective plan. Participants in the cool room made the correct choice over half the time; those in the warm room, on the other hand, made the correct choice only a quarter of the time. Warmer temperatures seemed to make participants more likely to rely on simplistic patterns of decision-making, which in turn led to inferior choices. These results suggest that complex decision-making, like simple cognitive tasks, is adversely affected by warm temperatures.
A third study suggests that warm surroundings may not just cause people to fail at complex decision-making—it may cause them to shy away from making these sorts of decisions in the first place. In this study, participants were placed in either a warm or a cool room and asked to choose between two products: an innovative one and a traditional one. Participants in warm rooms, relative to those in cool rooms, were much more likely to choose the traditional product—ostensibly because they did not have the cognitive resources necessary to evaluate the new information relevant to an innovative item.
Of course, demonstrating temperature-related differences in cognitive functioning does not necessarily mean that these differences are due to depleted glucose supplies. Nor does it rule out the possibility that these effects are driven by improvements in cognitive ability under cooler conditions (as opposed to impairment under warmer conditions). With these alternate interpretations in mind, the researchers added one crucial component to each study: they depleted glucose supplies for half of the participants before placing them into warm or cool rooms, and left the other half undepleted. Participants in warm conditions behaved almost exactly like pre-depleted participants; this suggests that warm temperatures result in natural resource depletion, which in turn impairs cognitive functioning.
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17 Comments
Add CommentThat's interesting. Perhaps that is why there are more conservatives where it is hot.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe article warns against making that connection but I couldn't help thinking that this explains Rick Perry.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm glad they finally got around to pointing out that this is an adaptation issue, not an inherent nature issue. It would have been a lot better (and less incendiary) if they'd made that point on the first page, rather than the first.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe other silly part of this work is that they didn't control for relative humidity. Can people think better if they can control their body heat through sweating, and do they have problems when they cannot due to humidity? How fast do people's mental abilities change as they acclimate, and how fast do they lose acclimation? These are rather more interesting questions.
So, put on a hat, and drink something sweet, perhaps also with caffeine
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have suffered from debilitating pressure headaches all my life and when I can think clearly it seems that 24-36 hours before a weather change occurs I get a pressure head ache.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCan anybody help ?
I'm certainly not a doctor, but I suggest you ask your doctor about having an MRI brain scan. Fluid within the braincase may be affected by barometric pressure, for example...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou might be on to something there. Prior to the advent of air conditioning beginning in the 1950s, hot and especially humid conditions made all physical activity very difficult. This had many very real social repercussions - I think including a general reluctance to start new projects, for example...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThank you.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes I've had them all. With negative results. Maybe it is time to have them again.
I love the out of the box thinking! Great speculative thought on how the brain energy balance works; and much can be derived through an understanding of Physiological Homeostasis with regard to glucose. However, the most recent research indicates that the brain burns lactose when under stress (anxiety, physical exertion and temperature extremes) and not entirely glucose. This could be a missing factor in why epidemiological studies do not confirm the classic 70 year old wisdom on energy burn, brain caloric burn, heat, blood sugar, stress, weight and exercise.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe have a LONG way to go before we can have sufficient confidence on extrapolative speculation in this arena; and we must be careful because moralist will use prima facia speculation as a basis from which to wag their finger at people who suffer from diabetes or heart disease - and block the science in and around those subjects as being unnecessary. Moreover we are a long way from actually being able to help the skyrocketing group which suffers glucose/endocrine damage from current causes which are not well understood.
But let's keep it up!! I like it.
That's a very interesting thesis worthy of more scientific research.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGee, CA is a lot warmer than most of the Midwest right now. And government seems to be more active in the winter than the summer.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo I'd say this is a great argument for why CA has such an idiotic gov't.
Perhaps that's why you didn't read the entire article and posted anyway, based on your own bigotry and that of those around you.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA diet change can be of great assistance: eating raw, unprocessed fruits and vegetables automatically lowers the blood pressure, whereas any processed, 'man-made' food intake increases it. Cutting out artificial additives, especially salt and caffeine, works wonders for capillaries!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthe reason WHY raw plant foods are so good? It's elementary: our DNA evolved on an ape's alimentary nutrition scheme...
I think the explanation why we find it so
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisdifficult to function mentally well under extreme weather conditions can clearly be found in our origins: After all, our genomes came out of equatorial African highlands! I happened to sample the wonderful climate in Uganda, forty years ago, with its natural air'conditioning', indeed our 'ideal' climate, all the year round , in the same temperature range, between about 23 and 27 degrees Celsius, and never too humid- because of its altitude; in fact, our original Paradise- -on- Earth climate.
But 'we' made the tree change, took the risk, survived the Ice Ages , and, wow, we came out of them with bigger & better brains having got us into this 'Global Warming' mess..
Here in Perth / Western Australia, we are currently breaking all weather records, with dry heat waves of 40-plus degrees for weeks on end, and if it was not for the sanctuary of the Indian Ocean right on our doorstep, with its divine 23 degrees Celsius, it would be unlivable; but even the Indian Ocean temperatures have increased in these past few years,by between two and four degrees, in the North West, with see weeds found dying, and sharks and whales shifting their habitats...
So much for talking about the weather! Political correctness ain't what it used to be either.
Tony,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf the weather change that you are talking about involves a change in barometric pressure you may be suffering from blocked eustachian tubes or sinuses. Not being able to equalize pressure can lead to a headache. You can get this checked out by a doctor.
Our ancetors functioned well enough to run big game into heat exhaustion on the hot African savanna. But men were men then. They didn't pamper themselves with air conditioning and they didn't feel entitled to the world on a silver platter.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt appears someone is merely trying to fill their quota in the "publish or perish" business. A small amount of stress excites the body and revs the engine. A large stress overwhelms the body, so neither approach offered would be effective. If you want to hammer out the
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"next big thing," get your lazy butt out of bed on a cool, crisp day as the sun first rises over the horizon.