Reading heart-warming stories elevates body temperature

Human beings have been adapting themselves to climate and environment through evolution for a long time. The author of the book thinks about this fact somewhat differently. Human evolution has been a journey of body temperature adjustments, the author says. It means that a series of changes including disappearance of hair on the skin, use of fire and clothing, building of homes and living with other people derived from the human’s choice to control their body temperatures.

In fact, the author showcases how much people’s emotion, relationship and language are affected by body temperatures and atmospheric temperatures. He gathered some 80 students and let them read books in Poland. One of the stories is description of a warm-hearted and friendly person, and the other is description of a talented and cold-hearted person. The author instructed the students to estimate room temperature after reading the stories. As a result, the group of students who read the former gave estimations of temperature about 2 degrees Celsius higher than the other group. When people had their finger temperatures taken after being given a chance to feel a sense of affiliation or a sense of isolation, and the group who felt a sense of isolation displayed figure temperatures about 0.4 percent lower on average than the other group.

This demonstrates that physical temperatures affect people in recognizing social temperatures, while social temperatures also affect them in sensing physical temperatures. The author also cites the result of a study suggesting that would-be home buyers more often decide to actually buy homes on sale when temperatures drop and thus argue that the ability to sell homes is also related to body temperatures. This is because the primary objective of a home is the function of keeping body temperatures to protect you and your family from cold weather that can jeopardize their life. Such fact prompts us to rethink the existence of humans as an animal specie in this era when people are restricted from physical contacts and deprived of chances to hear words of warmth from others.


beborn@donga.com