Lynott Dermot, Corker Katherine, Connell Louise, O'Brien Kerry
Department of Psychology, Maynooth University, Maynooth, County Kildare, Ireland.
Department of Psychology, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK.
Br J Soc Psychol. 2023 Jul;62(3):1177-1214. doi: 10.1111/bjso.12626. Epub 2023 Feb 16.
Research from the social sciences suggests an association between higher temperatures and increases in antisocial behaviours, including aggressive, violent, or sabotaging behaviours, and represents a heat-facilitates-aggression perspective. More recently, studies have shown that higher temperature experiences may also be linked to increases in prosocial behaviours, such as altruistic, sharing, or cooperative behaviours, representing a warmth-primes-prosociality view. However, across both literatures, there have been inconsistent findings and failures to replicate key theoretical predictions, leaving the status of temperature-behaviour links unclear. Here we review the literature and conduct meta-analyses of available empirical studies that have either prosocial (e.g., monetary reward, gift giving, helping behaviour) or antisocial (self-rewarding, retaliation, sabotaging behaviour) behavioural outcome variables, with temperature as an independent variable. In an omnibus multivariate analysis (total N = 4577) with 80 effect sizes, we found that there was no reliable effect of temperature on the behavioural outcome measured. Further, we find little support for either the warmth-primes-prosociality view or the heat-facilitates-aggression view. There were no reliable effects if we consider separately the type of behavioural outcome (prosocial or antisocial), different types of temperature experience (haptic or ambient), or potential interactions with the experimental social context (positive, neutral, or negative). We discuss how these findings affect the status of existing theoretical perspectives and provide specific suggestions advancing research in this area.
社会科学研究表明，较高温度与反社会行为增加之间存在关联，包括攻击、暴力或破坏行为，这代表了一种热促进攻击的观点。最近，研究表明，较高温度体验也可能与亲社会行为增加有关，如利他、分享或合作行为，这代表了一种温暖引发亲社会性的观点。然而，在这两类文献中，都存在不一致的研究结果，且未能重复关键的理论预测，使得温度与行为之间联系的现状尚不明朗。在此，我们回顾了相关文献，并对以温度为自变量、亲社会（如金钱奖励、送礼、帮助行为）或反社会（自我奖励、报复、破坏行为）行为结果变量的现有实证研究进行了荟萃分析。在一项包含80个效应量的综合多变量分析（样本总量N = 4577）中，我们发现温度对所测量的行为结果没有可靠影响。此外，我们几乎没有找到对温暖引发亲社会性观点或热促进攻击观点的支持。如果我们分别考虑行为结果类型（亲社会或反社会）、不同类型的温度体验（触觉或环境温度）或与实验社会背景（积极、中性或消极）的潜在相互作用，均未发现可靠影响。我们讨论了这些发现如何影响现有理论观点的现状，并为推进该领域的研究提供了具体建议。
