Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

The surrounding environment has a profound impact on human behaviour. Historically, studies have shown that highertemperatures are associated with increases in antisocial behaviours (aggression, violence). More recently, studies havelinked higher temperature experiences to increases in prosocial behaviours (altruism, co-operation). Such contrastingpatterns leave the status of temperature-behaviour links unclear. Here we conduct a series of meta-analyses of laboratory-based empirical studies that measure either prosocial (monetary reward, gift giving, helping) or antisocial (retaliation,horn honking, sabotage) outcomes, with temperature as an independent variable. Overall, we found that there was noreliable effect of temperature on the behavioural outcomes measured. In follow-up analyses, there was no reliable effectof temperature on prosocial or antisocial outcomes when analysed separately. We consider why the evidence to supporttemperature-behaviour links from laboratory-based studies is weak, assess potential moderators, and examine how futurestudies can attempt to reconcile seemingly contradictory patterns in the literature.