![]() ![]() "But you also have, at the same time, an experience with a warm object, in that case a warm human being," Williams said. The child is experiencing love, affection, comfort. And you can imagine why: Think of a baby held in its mother's arms. Somewhere in the brain, those two sensations are linked, he says. Williams thinks it's no coincidence that we use the same word - warmth - to describe both a physical and an emotional experience. "Participants who held the hot coffee cup rated this Person A as more generous, more social, happier, better natured" than participants who held the iced coffee cup, Williams said. Here's where the coffee's influence became apparent. They read a short description of a hypothetical person - Person A - and they had to evaluate this stranger's personality. When they arrived at the fourth floor, they filled out questionnaires. But that short experience must have changed something in their brains. ![]() They held the cup for only a few seconds. Half the students got to hold hot coffee half got iced coffee. As they rode up, the woman asked students, "in a pretty innocuous way, if they wouldn't mind holding her coffee cup while she wrote down some information," Williams explained. One by one, she took the students up to the fourth floor in an elevator. She knew what she was supposed to do, but she didn't know why. The woman with the coffee was his confederate. He published his results in this week's issue of the journal Science. Lawrence Williams, who teaches at the University of Colorado, helped design the experiment while he was a doctoral student at Yale. She was holding some textbooks and a cup of coffee. ![]() They showed up at Yale University's psychology building and met their contact near the elevators. The student volunteers didn't realize when the experiment started. If you're going out on a date anytime soon, you may find this bit of science news useful: In a carefully controlled experiment, people who held something warm were more likely to perceive someone else as emotionally "warm" – and they were more likely to behave in a friendly, generous way themselves. Talk about getting in touch with your feelings. In an experiment, college students experiencing physical warmth perceived emotional warmth in strangers. ![]()
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