The Metaphor Effects Of Temperature Cognition And Trust Behaviors

Previous work revealed that physical temperature had an effect on trust behaviors. As trust includes "trust others" and "trustworthiness", and is a cultural-embedding. Therefore we should to test such effect among Chinese participants. In addition, A common assumption about metaphorical effects is their unidirectional nature, in others words, the concrete domain should affect the abstract domain, but not vice versa. How can we account for bidirectional effects in behavioral research? Lee and Schwarz suggest that it may be driven by coactivation. But whether coactivation is the underlying mechanism of metaphorical effects remains to be tested. We suppose if coactivation is the underlying mechanism of metaphorical effects, then trust behavior can have an effect on perceptions of the ambient temperature as they have a plausible neural basis. Therefore, the present study also examined how trust feedback (trust, untrust, control) affected people’s perceptions of the ambient temperature, and its stability in different ambient temperature.In experiment 1, upon arrival, participants briefly touched either a cold or warm cup, and then played an economic trust game. In the game there are "investors" or "trustees"; "Investors" receive cards first and make an investment (how much money to invest?), then the cards go to "trustees" and they get triple of the initial investment; now "trustees" have two options:A, give 0 back (which is the "untrust" behavior causing lose to "investors"); B, give double of the initial investment back (which is the "trust" behavior expected by "investors"). About twenty people in each room, participants were told that they would play the game with participants in another room, and they could actually take away the money they make during the game. And they were also told that they had been "randomly assigned" to the role of either investors or trustees. While in fact, all participants were assigned to play "investors". Our results indicted that participants primed with cold invested less money to an anonymous companion as compared to those in the warm condition and neutral condition, and those primed with warm was quite similar to those in the neutral condition.In experiment 2a, experiment 2b, upon arrival, participants briefly touched either a cold or warm cup, and then played the economic trust game. About twenty people in each room, participants were told that they would play the game with participants in another room, and they could actually take away the money they make during the game. And they were also told that they had been "randomly assigned" to the role of either investors or trustees.While in fact, all participants were assigned to play "trustees", "investors" were actually confederates who had previously been instructed to make an investment. Our results indicted that the effect of temperature on the amount of returns was not significant between different conditions.In experiment 3, Upon arrival, participants were randomly assigned to either a cold laboratory where room temperature was held constant at 17’C or a much warmer laboratory (22’C) and were told that they would played the economic decision-making game alike. Participants were told that they had been "randomly assigned" to the role of either investors or trustees.While in fact, all participants were assigned to play "investors", and "trustees" were actually confederates who had previously been instructed to give trust or untrust feedback. Eventually, half of the participants got "trust" feedback, another half got "untrust" feedback. After participants got their feedback, they completed a questionnaire in surface investigating physical conditions of the laboratory (i.e., light, space, air) on 7-point Likert scale, and two other questions for participants to estimate the current room temperature and the comfortable ambient temperature (in degrees Celsius). Of course only the temperature questions were for later analysis, the others are just disguise. The gap between estimated current room temperature and the comfortable ambient temperature was the indicator of temperature-comfort degree. The bigger the gap is, the lower the comfort degree is. Our results confirmed that participants receiving trust feedback perceive the ambient temperature to be warmer than participants receiving untrust feedback, and the room temperature to be more comfortable.Finally this study draws the following conclusion:(1) Cold cognition can reduce people’s interpersonal trust, but warm cognition has no effect on it; (2) There is no link between temperature cognition and people’s trustworthiness; (3) Trust can have an effect on people’s temperature cognition,and "trust makes the world warmer"is not just a linguistic quirk but also have psychological consequences.