The hot topic of perception!

This week is all about how temperature perception effects how we see the world! Alike last week, this post has required some fairly serious sources so this week I'll leave a link to our main source at the bottom of the post.

The premise

Overall the premise of warm and cold natured people is a factor of life everyone will be familiar with as it's a surface level judgment made almost immediately, even if your not intending to.

The perception of someone as warm indicates they come across as enthusiastic, open to others and caring, whereas the opposite is shown in cold people being seen as emotionally unavailable, wary and uninvested.

This all links to coffee/ hot drinks as its been studied to show that drink temperatures are perceived by both yourself and others to make you feel and seem more affectionate and caring! The study showed participants holding a hot drink compared to a cold drink when interacting with others, where perceived as warmer individuals in personality, and those holding the warm drink resulted in acting more charitably to others rather than thinking of themselves.

The connection

In the brain there's an area called the Insular Cortex, this area is in charge of honestly, alot of tasks, the main ones to note for this topic are that it controls sensory perceptions including that of temperature and plays a large part in complex emotional states such as empathy and trust.

This study showed a fairly clear correlation in the testing, as people who held a hot coffee when interacting with others even for only a moment, where perceived as warmer individuals in personality than those who held iced coffees. This goes to show a relation between the Insular Cortex's ability to sense temperature and its perception of these sensations in connection to feelings of empathy and trust when warm and the opposites when cold.

Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2737341/

I hope you've enjoyed this week's topic! Have a great week and some even better coffees!