Study finds hot drinks make warm friends

William Atkins
Friday, 24 October 2008 20:24

Science - Biology

A U.S. study has shown that a steaming hot cup of coffee helps volunteers to describe a stranger in “warmer” terms than a iced coffee. So, if you are trying to win over someone, try it with a cup of hot chocolate.


The researchers used 41 undergraduate student volunteers. Each volunteer was provided a cup of hot coffee or iced coffee as they walked from the lobby to the laboratory where the experiment was to take place.

However, they were not told the beverage was part of the experiment.

Once in the laboratory, the volunteers were shown a list of personality traits from a fictional person.

The researchers then asked the volunteers to describe and rate the person as to how “warm” or “cold” they felt toward the person on a scale from one to seven.

The volunteers holding the hot cup of coffee described the imaginary person with much more favorable (“warmer”) descriptions than the volunteers with the cold cup of iced coffee.

However, the cold or hot drink did not change the answer the participants had when they judged other personality traits of the imaginary person—only whether the stranger was perceived as being “a warm person” or “a cold person.”

The researchers then performed another experiment using hot or cold therapeutic pads. See what happened on page two.