If you want people to act more warmly, offer them a hot cup of coffee and make them hold it for a minute or two. Subconsciously, temperature affects our perceptions—and actions—find
studies by Yale University psychologist John Bargh, PhD, and his colleagues.
In one, volunteers who
held a warm-pack before playing a game trusted in and invested more money with an anonymous partner than did those whose hands were chilled. It's a quirk of the insula, a prune-sized part of the brain that forms cross-associations between physical and psychological warmth. When you heat people up—even their hands, briefly—they perceive you and everyone else as warmer, and they respond in kind.
