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Next time a customer comes to your office, offer him a cup of coffee. And when you’ re doing your holiday shopping online, make sure you’ re holding a large glass of iced tea. The physical sensation (感觉) of warmth encourages emotional warmth, while a cold drink in hand prevents you from making unwise decisions--those are the practical lesson being drawn from recent research by psychologist John A. Bargh.
Psychologists have known that one person’ s perception (感知) of another’ s "warmth" is a powerful determiner in social relationships. Judging someone to be either "warm" or "cold" is a primary consideration, even beating evidence that a "cold" person may be more capable. Much of this is rooted in very early childhood experiences, Bargh argues, babies’ conceptual sense of the world around them is shaped by physical sensations, particularly warmth and coldness. Classic studies by Harry Harlow, published in 1958, showed monkeys preferred to stay close to a cloth "mother" rather than one made of wire, even when the wire "mother" carried a food bottle. Harlow’ s work and later studies have led psychologists to stress the need for warm physical contact from caregivers to help young children grow into healthy adults with normal social skills.
Feelings of "warmth" and "coldness" in social judgments appear to be universal. Although no worldwide study has been done, Bargh says that describing people as "warm" or "cold" is common to many cultures, and studies have found those perceptions influence judgment in dozens of countries.
To test the relationship between physical and psychological warmth, Bargh conducted an experiment which involved 41 college students. A research assistant handed the students either a hot cup of coffee, or a cold drink, to hold while the researcher filled out a short information form. The drink was then handed back. After that, the students were asked to rate the personality of "Person A" based on a particular description, Those who had briefly held the warm drink regarded Person A as warmer than those who had held the iced drink.
"We are grounded in our physical experiences even when we think abstractly," says Bargh.