Many Armenians believe that all health issues and every aspect of well-being are associated with staying warm. I will concede to the idea that being cold can affect our immune system’s ability to fend off illness, but when you start blaming the cold for a gassy belly and a liquidy stool, you may have gone too far.
Not wearing slippers inside the home (walking around in just your socks, or even – God forbid – going barefoot) and thereby exposing your feet to the elements is akin to self-mutilation to my Armenian friends. If I ever tell them something is wrong with me (headache, stomach-ache, sore throat, probably even a minor scrape), they’ll tell me it’s because I was cold. And then they’ll yell at me for not wearing my slippers.
While temperature may not be the dominant force behind our health and well-being as they say, a study done by John A. Bargh proves that it actually can affect the way we perceive certain things. Bargh claims that “people holding a warm cup of coffee tend to have more positive opinions of others, and having something warm in your hand can actually make you more generous.”
No wonder Sheldon always offers warm beverages to anyone who cries or comes to visit him on Big Bang Theory!
In Bargh’s study, people were asked to hold a cup of either hot or iced coffee for someone who had pretended to be flustered and couldn’t carry it themselves.
Later they were told they were to receive a reward for completing the study and could choose a prize either for themselves or for someone else. The study showed that people who held the warm beverage tended to be more altruistic than the ones who held the iced cofee; they were more willing to give the gift to someone else.
The warm-beverage people were more willing to give because, as Bargh contests, warmth causes us to trust people more, to cooperate more easily, and to want to help others. He says the connection we make between warmth and closeness is innate because we associate it with our caretakers from an early age, who, ideally, represent for us a bond of trust.
Maybe it’s only because I’m drinking a cup of hot tea right now that I feel more understanding toward the Armenians who relentlessly scold me for never keeping myself warm enough, but maybe they’re really onto something!
Why not, this week I’m challenged to drink three warm beverages per day and see if I get any nicer.
Weekly Grape: Can warm beverages actually impact my perception of others?
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