Researchers from Washington State University now say that emotional responses to heat are strongly individualized, with age being the only factor that significantly moderated these reactions. According to the research, the increased temperature made older adults become uncomfortable even earlier than younger subjects, but it didn’t evoke a stronger emotional response.
Lead author Kim Meidenbauer, a WSU psychology researcher, pointed out that of course it was assumed that older adults would be more uncomfortable because their ability to thermally regulate themselves is poorer. But what was unexpectedly seen is that they responded with fewer negative emotionality compared to the younger populations. Meidenbauer added that perhaps it connects to greater stability over emotions often associated with aging.
The study aims to investigate if the trends of high temperatures are positively associated with increases in violent crime as well as hospitalizations resulting from mental health problems, an association found by researchers that is not actually proven. Negative emotional states such as irritability, anxiety, and gloom have been a documented condition to be associated with aggressive behaviors. To that, the researchers recruited approximately 400 participants in Chicago who utilised an app to send in their level of comfort and emotional state while outside during the summer of 2022. Data was matched against real-time temperature geolocation.
No direct relationship was established between outdoor temperature and the emotional states, but perceived temperature-even how hot participants felt-was the primary determinant of how uncomfortable people were. Participants reportedly felt perfectly fine even in extreme heat, but many, particularly younger adults, experienced negative emotional states when they became uncomfortable.
Meidenbauer emphasized that the psychological diversity in how people perceive and react to heat makes it difficult to connect heat to attitudes or behavior directly. The emotional responses from above will be further controlled and tested in laboratory conditions in subsequent studies. This study has been funded by the National Science Foundation and NASA.