The Influence of Heat on Aggression: New Research Findings

KOMPAS.com – For decades, research has shown that extreme heat is linked to violence.

Despite consistent findings, there is still controversy regarding why heat and violence can occur together.

So, can heat which causes a series of problems, for example crop failure, cause someone to become more aggressive? Or does heat influence human decision making directly?

Research on a person’s heat and attitude

A new study suggests that hot temperatures may make some people more aggressive, but only if those people already feel at a disadvantage.

However, in most cases, hot weather does not directly influence a person’s decision making.

Also read: 8 Ways to Maintain Health in Extreme Hot Weather

Robert Pickmans, a doctoral student at the University of California, Berkeley, and one of the researchers, said that analysis of heat and human behavior is important, considering climate change that is occurring throughout the world.

The findings have been released by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Previously, much of the research on the psychological effects of heat was conducted using small and limited sample sizes.

In this new study, the research team recruited approximately 900 participants from Berkeley, California, and 1,000 participants from Nairobi, Kenya.

The volunteers were taken to a room at 22 degrees Celsius and a room at 30 degrees Celsius to undergo a series of standard decision-making and cognitive tests. The researchers then compared the individuals’ performance in cool and hot rooms.

The first finding is that, in general, there is not much difference. People in hot rooms complained of feeling sleepier, but their decision-making abilities did not decrease.

Also read: What Causes Extreme Hot Weather in Indonesia?

However, there were interesting results in one test. In this test, participants have the opportunity to lose some of the savings of other participants.

There are no major benefits or risks in doing so. Participants don’t get any monetary rewards, but other participants also won’t know how much that person lost. So, this test is a standard measure of aggression.

The heat didn’t affect the participants in Berkeley when taking this test, but in Nairobi, participants in the hotter room acted tougher.

Upon further investigation, the researchers discovered that this impact was caused by participants being members of ethnic groups who were marginalized in the election, disrupting their daily lives in Kenya at that time.

Pickmans said the findings were quite interesting, especially considering the climate literature documenting the link between temperature and political violence.

Also read: NASA Confirms Summer 2023 Will Be the Hottest in History

However, Pickmans cautioned that the results of this study should be considered exploratory because the researchers did not conduct the study with the aim of looking at differences between ethnic groups.

According to Pickmans, this study is still open to further research. He and his colleagues have conducted further research at Berkeley by asking study participants to be in a room with a temperature of 30 degrees Celsius for two hours.

So far, researchers haven’t seen any significant decline in abilities, although participants did show some decline in certain areas of reasoning and in overriding their impulses.

These findings suggest that researchers trying to predict the impacts of climate change should focus on the influence of climate on resource availability, not on heat influencing people’s behavior.

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2023-10-06 04:01:00
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