Just looking at somebody shivering is enough to make us feel freezing, researchers have found. They discovered volunteers who watched videos of people putting their hands in cold water found their own body temperature drop significantly. They say the behavior is part of our ability to stay the same be with others.
The research by scientists in the Brighton and Sussex Medical School shows that humans are susceptible to “temperature contagion”.
Dr Neil Harrison, who led the research, said that such unconscious physiological changes may help us be the same with one another and live in communities. He said, “Mimicking another person is believed to help us create an internal model of their physiological state which we can use to better understand their attitudes and how they are feeling. Humans are greatly social creatures and much of humans’ success results from our ability to work together in communities — this would be hard to do if we were not able to rapidly change with each other and predict one another’s thoughts, feelings and motivations.”
For the research, which was published in the journal PLOS ONE, 36 participants each watched eight videos of actors putting their hands in either clearly warm or cold water. At the same time, the temperature of their own hands was measured. Their hands were colder when watching the “cold” videos. However, the “warm” videos did not cause a change.
Dr Harrison explains: “We think that this is probably because the warm videos were less powerful — the only evidence that the water was warm steam at the beginning of the videos and the pink color of the actor’s hand but blocks of ice were clearly visible throughout the cold video. There is also some evidence to suggest that people may be more sensitive to others appearing cold than hot.”
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