The Influence Of Temperature On Social Attitude Of College Students

Social attitude is a complex psychological phenomenon of a diverse structure.By outcome,it is mainly divided into two types: social acceptance and social sio.Some researchers hold that social acceptance and social exclusion are two opposing concepts.Further research suggests that social exclusion often causes negative attitudes and emotions among individuals,whereas social acceptance generates positive attitudes and emotions among individuals.Embodied cognition is a cutting-edge theory in psychology today.It contends that the body plays a part in the formation of cognition while the change of higher psychological phenomena in turn affects sensory perception.Many empirical studies on embodied cognition have been conducted.Some researchers have examined the effect of temperature on cognition,believing that to some extent warm temperatures generate positive cognition and emotions while cold temperatures produce negative cognition and emotions among the subjects.This study attempts to verify the correlation between temperature and social attitude from the angles of cognition and emotion to draw more systematic conclusions.Based on previous studies,standardized laboratory paradigms like situational manipulation,recognition-learning and Cyberball are employed.Two sub-studies are established with a total of four experiments.The experimental results are as follows:Study 1 draws on conceptual metaphor theory to examine the effect of temperature on the social attitude of the subjects.Two experiments are performed.Experiment 1 tests whether the subjects of the cold temperature group outperform those of the warm temperature group in learning and recognizing social exclusion words.Experiment 2 tests whether the subjects of the warm temperature group outperform those of the cold temperature group in learning and recognizing social acceptance words.Study 2 is based on another approach to conceptual metaphor theory: the change of psychological variables affects the subjects’ assessment or feeling of embodied variables.In this study,different social attitude scenarios are established to induce the senses of social acceptance and exclusion among the subjects so as to observe whether their perception of temperature changes.Similarly,two experiments are performed.Experiment 3 tests whether the subjects of the social exclusion group outperform those of the social acceptance group in learning and recognizing cold temperature words.Experiment 4 tests whether the subjects of the social acceptance group outperform those of the social exclusion group in learning and recognizing warm temperature words.The results find that(1)there is two-way embodied effect between cold temperature and social exclusion;(2)no two-way embodied effect is found between warm temperature and social acceptance.Although this study fails to find a two-way specific effect between heat and social acceptance,it cannot be easily denied.