The Cold Contagion

We can catch a cold from someone else. The virus that causes it is, after all, contagious. But is it also possible to feel a chill just by looking at someone else experiencing it?

According to a new study published in PLOS One, humans can feel so. The researchers claim that this phenomenon, which they dub the ‘temperature contagion’, shows that unconscious physiological changes in humans occur as a way of helping us empathise with others.

For the study, conducted by researchers from University of Sussex in the UK, 36 participants were made to watch videos that depicted actors with one of their hands in visibly warm or cold water. Four control videos with the actors’ hand in front of a tank of room temperature water were also shown. At the same time, the participants’ hand temperature was monitored. The researchers found participants’ hand temperatures were significantly colder when watching the cold videos. When watching actors put their hands in iced water, the participants’ temperatures dropped by a small but statistically significant amount: 0.2° C in their left hands, and 0.05° C in their right. There was no significant change in temperature when the participants watched the control videos and the warm water videos.

According to the researchers, such unconscious physiological changes help us to empathise with one another and live in communities. They argue that feeling chilly is just one of many feelings and behaviours—like yawning or feeling of fear or stress— that can be passed along from one person to another close by.

In a press release, Dr Neil Harrison, who led the research, says, ‘Humans are profoundly social creatures and much of humans’ success results from our ability to work together in complex communities—this would be hard to do if we were not able to rapidly empathise with each other and predict one another’s thoughts, feelings and motivations.’ He adds, ‘Mimicking another person is believed to help us create an internal model of their physiological state which we can use to better understand their motivations and how they are feeling.’

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