This is what the extreme heat does to our behavior
Goodness, I know I'm going to sound like the ultimate complaining Dutch person now, but wasn't it blood hot yesterday? In many places, the mercury hit well 35 degrees and there was hardly a breath of wind to be found. Yet you won't hear me really complaining, because secretly I do enjoy that tropical heat. Although I must admit that I stayed inside almost the entire day, because outside I can't get a word on paper. Sometimes I dare to make an attempt and take my laptop out onto the balcony, but that often results in chatting with the neighbors, looking at all the cheerful gardens, and then sweating and exhausted moving back inside.
Because as lovely as that sunshine is, once those temperatures shoot up, we can become quite sluggish. On such days, we literally can't get anything done and achieve very little. Fortunately, you don't have to feel too guilty about it, because research has shown that our brain reacts a whopping thirteen percent slower when we are exposed to heat. Scientists from Boston University studied a group of 44 students who had to perform various thinking exercises for twelve days. This group was split in two: one part had to perform the exercises in a room where the temperature was 21.6 degrees, and the other part of the group had to do this in a space of 27.6 degrees.
The participants in the warmer environment made significantly more mistakes than those in the other room. Based on these results and after extensive research, the scientists concluded that our brains respond more slowly at high temperatures. Our concentration clearly decreases due to the heat, but the exact reason for this has not yet been established.
But besides our brain experiencing the necessary delay, we seem to become more aggressive in our actions during extreme heat. John Cotton from Purdue University examined American police statistics and discovered that much more violence occurs at a temperature of thirty degrees or higher. The higher the temperature, the quicker we seem to get irritated. American psychologists Robert Baron and Victoria Ransberger also confirm this and state that the risk of riots increases with the heat. Once it reaches thirty degrees, protesters start throwing objects more quickly, the protest lasts longer, and the police have to intervene more often. Could the expression ‘heated discussion’ have something to do with this?
Well, that sun doesn't always do people good. Extreme heat makes us slow and at the same time extremely combative, quite a peculiar combination. Well, fortunately, the temperatures seem to become a bit more bearable after this tropical spike.
(Sources: Metro, EOS Science)
