Keep it cool: temperature priming effect on cognitive control

Intensive Urbanization, Urban Meteorology and Air Pollutants: Effects on the Temperature of a City in a Basin Geography

A qualitative study of thermal transfers is carried out from a record of measurements (time series) of meteorological variables (temperature, relative humidity and magnitude of wind speeds) and pollutants (PM₁₀, PM_2.5 and CO) in six localities located at different heights in the geographic basin of Santiago de Chile. The measurements were made in two periods, 2010-2013 and 2017-2020 (a total of 2,049,336 data), the last period coinciding with a process of intense urbanization, especially high-rise construction. The measurements, in the form of hourly time series, are analyzed on the one hand according to the theory of thermal conduction discretizing the differential equation of the temporal variation in the temperature and, on the other hand, through the theory of chaos that provides the entropies (S). Both procedures demonstrate, comparatively, that the last period of intense urbanization presents an increase in thermal transfers and temperature, which affects urban meteorology and makes it more complex. As shown by the chaotic analysis, there is a faster loss of information for the period 2017-2020. The consequences of the increase in temperature on human health and learning processes are studied.

Heat and fraud: evaluating how room temperature influences fraud likelihood

Despite the considerable amount of research devoted to understanding fraud, few studies have examined how the physical environment can influence the likelihood of committing fraud. One recent study found a link between room brightness and occurrence of human fraud behaviors. Therefore, the present study aims to investigate how temperature may affect fraud. Based on a power analysis using the effect size observed in a pilot study, we recruited 105 participants and randomly divided them into three temperature groups (warm, medium, and cool). We then counted fraud behaviors in each group and tested for potential significant differences with a Kruskal–Wallis test. Additionally, we used a correlation analysis to determine whether the perceived temperature affected fraud. As a result, regardless of participants’ subjective sensory experience or their physical environment, we did not find that temperature-related factors influence the incidence of fraud. We discussed the potential reason for the results and suggested directions for future research.

When the physical coldness in the viewer's environment leads to identification with a suffering protagonist

Based on theories of narrative engagement and embodied cognition, we hypothesised that a fit between the psychological state of a protagonist and the physical sensation of the viewer would enhance the subsequent identification with the protagonist, but not para-social relationship with him (seeing the protagonist as a friend). We also hypothesised that identification and a para-social relationship would lead to distinct effects on attitudes related to the narrative. Participants (N = 60) were randomly assigned to either a warmed or cooled room where they watched a movie clip alone in which a suffering protagonist wanted to undergo euthanasia while his close others wanted him to stay alive. Then, the participants answered a questionnaire measuring their identification and para-social relationship with the protagonist and their attitudes toward euthanasia. In accordance with the hypotheses, the results demonstrated that feeling cold enhanced identification with the suffering protagonist. However, the environmental temperature did not affect the development of para-social relationships. Moreover, identification with the suffering protagonist contributed to acceptance of his attitudes, reflected in more positive views of euthanasia. In contrast, having a para-social relationship with the protagonist resulted in negative attitudes toward euthanasia.

Motivated Cue-Integration and Emotion Regulation: Awareness of the Association Between Interoceptive and Exteroceptive Embodied Cues and Personal Need Creates an Emotion Goal

Research on emotion suggests that individuals regulate their emotions to attain hedonic or instrumental goals. However, little is known of emotion regulation under low emotional clarity. The theory of motivated cue integration (MCI) suggests that emotion regulation under low emotional clarity should be understood as dissociation between a high-level individual hierarchical system of goals and low level interoceptive and exteroceptive embodied cues. MCI conceptualizes low emotional clarity as the product of low access to signals of emotion that result in prediction error associated with mismatch between the current bodily state and the predicted state. This deficit in emotional processing could be understood as a problem of means substitution, suggesting that use of alternative multisensory data may facilitate situational evaluation. Based on this reasoning, a new perspective on emotion regulation under low emotional clarity is presented, according to which interchangeable attention to multisensory data associated with words, associations, and images may help in cue integration, enabling the creation of a link between concrete bodily cues, abstract mental representation, and a more accurate prediction. Based on the idea that emotional episodes are conceptualized as special types of goal-directed action episodes, this process will lead to the creation of broader integrative meaning, results in the development of emotion goal.

Motivated Cue Integration in Alexithymia: Improving Interoception and Emotion Information Processing by Awareness-of-Sensation Techniques

Recent findings indicate that alexithymia is the result of a multidomain, multidimensional failure of interoception. Whereas much of the literature addresses the cognitive and affective aspects of alexithymia, less is known about the association between the failure of interoception and the process of motivated cue integration. The theory of motivated cue integration integrates high-level control processes with low-level embodied and contextual cues, suggesting that selective attention to internal and contextual cues results in the creation of meaning that, in turn, influences judgment and action generation. Conceptualized as a special case of the cue integration problem, alexithymia may be associated with restricted access to emotional cues, indicating impaired connectivity between low-level embodied cues and top-down goals and values. This problem may also be viewed as a means substitution problem, indicating the individual's need for alternative multisensory information. Based on this reasoning, interventions that exploit awareness-of-sensation techniques (e.g., mindfulness, experiential approach, focusing) may help to improve the distinction between bodily sensation and interpretation and to create meaning of situational state by substitution of inaccessible affective cues with alternative cues. Accordingly, clinicians and neuropsychologists can help individuals who suffer from alexithymia by training them to use awareness-of-sensation techniques and directing their attention to alternative multisensory cues as well as alternative cognitive configurations (e.g., mental images). Integrating peripheral cues in the moment-by-moment generation of meaning and self-regulation can improve affective judgment through the exchange of inaccessible affective cues with alternative ones.

Precious Property or Magnificent Money? How Money Salience but Not Temperature Priming Affects First-Offer Anchors in Economic Transactions

The present study aims for a better understanding of how individuals' behavior in monetary price negotiations differs from their behavior in bartering situations. Two contrasting hypotheses were derived from endowment theory and current negotiation research to examine whether negotiators are more susceptible to anchoring in price negotiations versus in bartering transactions. In addition, past research found that cues of coldness enhance cognitive control and reduce anchoring effects. We attempted to replicate these coldness findings for price anchors in a distributive negotiations scenario and to illuminate the potential interplay of coldness priming with a price versus bartering manipulation. Participants (N = 219) were recruited for a 2 × 2 between-subjects negotiation experiment manipulating (1) monetary focus and (2) temperature priming. Our data show a higher anchoring susceptibility in price negotiations than in bartering transactions. Despite a successful priming manipulation check, coldness priming did not affect participants' anchoring susceptibility (nor interact with the price/bartering manipulation). Our findings improve our theoretical understanding of how the focus on negotiation resources frames economic transactions as either unidirectional or bidirectional, and how this focus shapes parties' susceptibility to the anchoring bias and negotiation behavior. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Perceptual-Semantic Congruency Facilitates Semantic Discrimination of Thermal Qualities

The ability to sense temperature is vital to our life. It signals the environmental condition, reflects the physiological conditions of our own body, and generates feelings of pleasantness or unpleasantness. Moreover, recent studies have demonstrated implicit associations between physical temperature and social/emotional concepts, suggesting the processing of temperature may even influence cognition. In this work, we examined the effect of physical warmth and coldness on semantic cognition. Participants performed speeded target categorization for thermal descriptors in the form of semantic words or illustrative figures representing the thermal qualities “warm” or “cold” while physical thermal stimulation was presented. We compared the average reaction time (RT) for the congruent and incongruent conditions managed by response key assignments. In the congruent condition, the response key for the symbol associated with warmth (coldness) was assigned to the hand with warm (cold) thermal stimulation, and in the incongruent condition the key assignment was reversed. Our results demonstrate that the average RT in the congruent condition was faster than in the incongruent one for both forms of thermal descriptors, suggesting that the experience of physical temperature facilitates the internal processing of the meaning of thermal quality.

Don't Forget To Properly Use Your Signal: Driving Down New Roads to Selection Decisions

Chamorro-Premuzic, Winsborough, Sherman, and Hogan (2016) note that new talent signals recently adopted by organizations are related to older selection and assessment methods. Drawing this connection between old and new technologies is helpful; however, viewing new technology as either shiny new objects or a brave new world creates a false dichotomy. Recent technology-enhanced human resources (HR) processes like the widespread use of gamified practices and video-recorded interviewing are not just fads or the beginning of a transformation in HR but rather natural evolutions of methods that differ across specific dimensions that can be identified and measured. It is important to view these recent advances as extensions of the existing methods. That is, we need to focus onhowthese new methods are different and not onthatthey are different.