New study says the cold you're feeling might just be too much sympathy
Wednesday, January 14, 2015, 10:37 AM - If the gloves and hats aren't keep you warm, maybe your best bet is too be a little colder to the people around you.
According to new research from the University of Sussex feeling cold is "contagious."
DON'T MISS: Sixteen years later: Remembering the Toronto blizzard of 1999
Volunteers in England looked at videos of people submerging their hands in cold water. According to the new study, the volunteers then showed a significant change in their own temperature—their own hands became colder.
According to Neuropsychiatrist Dr. Neil Harrison, unconscious physiological changes are a way to help us empathize with the people around us, allowing us to live in communities.
"Mimicking another person is believed to help us create an internal model of their physiological state which we can use to better understand their motivations and how they are feeling," Harrison said in a statement from the University of Sussex.
The research which was published in the journal PLOS ONE, found that the 36 participants showed drop in temperature when viewing the dip in cold water (which they thought was a discomfort). However they didn't show any physiological change when viewing videos of people placing their hands in warm water (which would still be comfortable.
"Humans are profoundly social creatures and much of humans' success results from our ability to work together in complex communities," Harrison explained. "This would be hard to do if we were not able to rapidly empathise with each other and predict one another's thoughts, feelings and motivations."
Why didn't heat get the same reaction?
One possibility is that people feel worse about others being cold than they do about them feeling warm.
But Harrison thinks that a strong enough cue could get a similar reaction.
"We think that this is probably because the warm videos were less potent—the only cues that the water was wrm was steam at the beginning of the video and the pink colour of the actor's hand," Harrison said. "Blocks of ice were clearly visible throughout the duration of the cold video.
MUST-SEE: Ever wondered what happens to silly string in extremely cold weather?
