‘Some like it cold’: on the association between the physical and affective notion of warmth

Various observations suggest a strong mental association between the physical and affective notion of warmth, possibly originating from early experiences with parental figures. Behaviourally, this link could increase the propensity to interact with, and bestow trust on, other individuals when prompted with warm primes. We investigated whether a similar phenomenon may follow the experience of coldness. Indeed, by evoking the idea of a rational, self-controlled person rather than that of an emotional one, the notion of 'cold' may elicit that of reliability, driving some individuals to behave more pro-socially in response to cold primes. To test this possibility, we collected a quantitative measure of the stereotypical 'warm = trustworthy' association from a sample of healthy volunteers (Exp1, N = 50) and verified whether variability in this parameter predicts behavioural responses to thermal primes in an Investment Game (Exp2, N = 32). An implicit link between qualities denoting trustworthiness and physical coldness (rather than warmth) did emerge in some participants. This variability affected responses at the Investment Game, confirming that intervening factors influence how bodily experiences translate into cognition. To further investigate the role of experience, linguistic and cultural factors, we compared responses to warm/cold primes of a thermally deafferented participant and healthy volunteers (Exp3, N = 20). Her behaviour confirmed that incidental sensory information does not affect all individuals in the same way: previous knowledge and individual experience contribute to shaping the mental association between the physical and the affective notion of warmth/coldness. These findings provide novel insight into research on embodied processes relative to social concepts.