My grandmother Meme, is a constant worrier. She would examine me every time I went out in the winter, feeling uneasy about my wet hair or lack of socks and exclaim the classic “oh sweetheart, I’m getting cold just looking at you!!” and I would always tell silly Meme that she was being ridiculous, although I have begun to think Meme was on to something. As I walk around campus I have seen some reckless college students dress completely improperly I find myself getting the chills and a heavy desire for my winter parka. Feeling cold has to be contagious.

Neuropsychiatrist Doctor Neil Harrison of Brighton and Sussex Medical School, Meme and I obviously all think the same way. As Harrison watched the movie Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, a film about Inuit legends in the Eastern Arctic Wilderness he found himself getting colder and colder. Harrison has worked for many years studying empathy and how humans can share and understand each other’s feelings. So he set out to see if the reaction people develop through viewing someone else cold was measurable.

Harrison created an experimental study with 36 participants who he had connect their right and left hands to a thermistor, a resistor dependant on temperature, with temperature sensitivity. Harrison had them watch videos, each 3 minutes in length, in which someone submerged their hands into either steaming hot or ice cold water. The thermistor registered that after watching the warm videos there was no change in body temperature. Although, after watching the cold videos, participant’s left hand temperature decreased by 0.36 degrees Fahrenheit. For the body to decrease by 0.36 degrees Fahrenheit is a statistically significant number, the significance of the difference can be seen when the body temperature is raised 0.36 degrees Fahrenheit because this is when an individual begins to sweat.  I wondered why there wasn’t a similar results from the warm videos,  Harrison believes that the experiment had only chilling effects because cubes of ice are more obvious to a viewer than rising steam. I felt the author should have also acknowledge the fact that the water could not be blisteringly hot and burn his grad students making the videos.

Harrison concludes that his participants drop in temperature is due to empathy and emotional contagion. Despite the continuing maturing understanding of empathy Dr. Mark Davis of Eckerd College asserts that empathy is what causes emotional contagion, or the mirroring of others’ behaviors and/or emotions. Harrison believes that a fair amount of workplace and personal success can be attributed to “ results from our ability to work together in complex communities – this would be hard to do if we were not able to rapidly empathize with each other and predict one another’s thoughts, feelings and motivations. I personally learned about emotional contagion as a captain of a lacrosse team: the moods of key or popular players dictated how successful a practice would be, how much effort the rest of the team would put forth, and how teammates would treat each other.  So when Harrison contends that emotional contagion is a part of our everyday life, I’m inclined to believe him.

Though I do think, based on the evidence, that there is a correlation between seeing someone cold and being cold, I think more studies are needed. In Harrison’s experiment the only information he gave about his participants is that they are healthy and between the ages of 19 and 26. As someone researching the topic I was unaware of gender, ethnicity or lifestyle. The study also fails to mention, on multiple varying websites used to search the topic, if the study was randomized. I purpose a new study that looks into the variables that Harrison ignores. I feel that the most important variable is age, it could play a serious role into how much emotional contagion affects the body. This could mean that a slight cold that gave a perfectly healthy 20 year old participant a quick chill could give a 83 year old women with a deteriorating body intense shivers and cold sweats. Another possible study design could explore if there is a difference effect from watching a video of someone experiencing extreme cold and then being right in front of someone that is experiencing cold. By having a study designed in such a way researchers could explore if being a close bystander leads to greater emotional contagion. A final possible study design would be to alter where you are taking the temperature of a person. You could take it orally or rectally to see if the hand does not properly represent body temperature.    All of Harrison’s experiment participants were marked perfectly healthy.

Despite the obvious need for more studies to find its extent, it does seem like empathy influences body temperature. Although Meme, Doctor Harrison and I seem to be the only people that these cold effects bewilder.  I have never experienced a Penn State winter that upperclass go on about, but it has been rumored that many young fools battle 3 feet of snow in flip flops and shorts. I hope that you have a hat, gloves and wool socks for the chills those students are going to send you.