It costs you a world to get out of bed, any task rises before you like an inaccessible wall, laziness is your owner and you jump to the minimum. It is the excessive heat that hits your body, affects your brain and turns you into a moody wreck.
Much research has analyzed how sustained high temperatures influence us for many days in a row. For example, how they decrease our intellectual performance, something that almost all of us have experienced.
A study published by US scientists in the National Bureau of Economic Research, a non-profit organization in that country, points out that temperatures above 26 ° C impair the cognitive ability of children in mathematical tests, although not in the reading comprehension. The authors suggest an explanation: when the sun shines, the body disperses the heat produced by brain activity less efficiently, which ends up impairing brain performance. This reasoning could also be applied to adult tasks.
Less productivity, more aggressive
Strong heat has labor and economic consequences. Research from Harvard Business School based on interviews and laboratory tests links low temperatures and rain to increased productivity for workers, who are more easily distracted on sunny days. When the weather is bad, people find it easier to focus on their obligations. If the thermometer rises we tend to think of leisure activities that we could do outside, even if we leave the office later and the heat is such that we have to go home.
On the other hand, it has been found that too hot weather increases the chances that people will get angry and even behave aggressively. Various studies have found a relationship between very high temperatures and an increase in violence. In his book Criminology: Theories, Patterns, and Typologies , American criminologist Larry J. Siegel provides statistics showing that violent acts in his country increase in July and August. In those months, he explains, people spend much more time abroad and interact more, which increases the possibility of conflicting interactions. In addition, these are weeks in which adolescents, protagonists of many of these confrontations, do not have class. This explanation is valid especially for large cities, where temperatures tend to be somewhat higher and the heat is more exasperating.
In this sense, it has been found that on the hottest days of the summer, drivers are more likely to not respect traffic lights, and there are more traffic accidents.
Escaping the heat is harder
Psychologists have endeavored to explain the causes of the pernicious effect of high temperatures. Most of his arguments are based on the feeling of discomfort. If you don’t have air conditioning, getting rid of the heat is almost impossible, especially if it is accompanied by humidity. In winter it is enough to bundle up, but going half naked will do little good in the heat of heat. When people feel uncomfortable due to causes we cannot control, we feel an anger that we tend to pour on others, in the form of sudden and uncontrollable anger.
The 40 degrees of summer in many parts of Spain overwhelm anyone, although perhaps not enough to reach the conclusions of Marie Connolly, professor of economics at the University of Quebec. In a work published in the Journal of Happiness Studies, it indicates that spending a whole day in temperatures above 32 ° C drastically affects the happiness of the individual, although, luckily, it is usually a fleeting sensation.
