Skip to main content
Search
Search
    Quick Search anywhere
    Quick search in Citations
Advanced Search
Skip main navigationClose Drawer MenuOpen Drawer Menu
Previous article
Replication

No Evidence That Experiencing Physical Warmth Promotes Interpersonal Warmth

Two Failures to Replicate Williams and Bargh (2008)

Published Online:December 10, 2018https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-9335/a000361

Abstract

Abstract.Williams and Bargh (2008) reported that holding a hot cup of coffee caused participants to judge a person’s personality as warmer and that holding a therapeutic heat pad caused participants to choose rewards for other people rather than for themselves. These experiments featured large effects (r = .28 and .31), small sample sizes (41 and 53 participants), and barely statistically significant results. We attempted to replicate both experiments in field settings with more than triple the sample sizes (128 and 177) and double-blind procedures, but found near-zero effects (r = −.03 and .02). In both cases, Bayesian analyses suggest there is substantially more evidence for the null hypothesis of no effect than for the original physical warmth priming hypothesis.

References

  • Anderson, C. A., Bushman, B. J. & Groom, R. W. (1997). Hot years and serious and deadly assault: Empirical tests of the heat hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73, 1213–1223. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.73.6.1213 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Bargh, J. (2017). Before you know it: The unconscious reasons we do what we do. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. First citation in articleGoogle Scholar

  • Benjamin, D. J., Berger, J. O., Johannesson, M., Nosek, B. A., Wagenmakers, E. J., Berk, R., … Cesarini, D. (2018). Redefine statistical significance. Nature Human Behaviour, 2, 6–10. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-017-0189-z First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • DeWall, C. & Bushman, B. J. (2009). Hot under the collar in a lukewarm environment: Words associated with hot temperature increase aggressive thoughts and hostile perceptions. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 1045–1047. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2009.05.003 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Fanelli, D. (2010). “Positive” results increase down the hierarchy of the sciences. PLoS One, 5, e10068. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0010068 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Fanelli, D. (2012). Negative results are disappearing from most disciplines and countries. Scientometrics, 90, 891–904. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-011-0494 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Garner, C. (2007). Upward bias in odds ratio estimates from genome-wide association studies. Genetic Epidemiology, 31, 288–295. https://doi.org/10.1002/gepi.20209 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • IJzerman, H. & Koole, S. L. (2011). From perceptual rags to metaphoric riches – bodily, social, and cultural constraints on sociocognitive metaphors: Comment on Landau, Meier, and Keefer (2010). Psychological Bulletin, 137, 355–361. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0022373 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • IJzerman, H., Coan, J. A., Wagemans, F. M. A., Missler, M. A., van Beest, I., Lindenberg, S. & Tops, M. (2015). A theory of social thermoregulation in human primates. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 464. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00464 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • IJzerman, H., Lindenberg, S., Dalğar, İ., Weissgerber, S. C., Vergara, R. C., Cairo, A., … Zickfeld, J. H. (2018). The human penguin project: Climate, social integration, and core body temperature. Collabra: Psychology, 4, 37. https://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.165 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • IJzerman, H. & Semin, G. R. (2009). The thermometer of social relations: Mapping social proximity on temperature. Psychological Science, 20, 1214–1220. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02434.x First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • IJzerman, H. & Semin, G. R. (2010). Temperature perceptions as a ground for social proximity. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46, 867–873. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2010.07.015 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Inagaki, T. K. & Eisenberger, N. I. (2013). Shared neural mechanisms underlying social warmth and physical warmth. Psychological Science, 24, 2272–2280. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797613492773 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Jamil, T., Ly, A., Morey, R. D., Love, J., Marsman, M. & Wagenmakers, E. J. (2017). Default “Gunel and Dickey” Bayes factors for contingency tables. Behavior Research Methods, 49, 638–652. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-016-0739-8 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • JASP Team. (2016). JASP. (Version 0.8.0.0) [Computer software]. Retrieved from https://jasp-stats.org/ First citation in articleGoogle Scholar

  • Jeffreys, H. (1961). Theory of probability (3rd ed.). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. First citation in articleGoogle Scholar

  • Lucas, M. (2000). Semantic priming without association: A meta-analytic review. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 6, 618–630. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03212999 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Lynott, D., Corker, K. S., Connell, L. & O’Brien, K. S. (2017). The effect of haptic and ambient temperature experience on prosocial behavior. Archives of Scientific Psychology, 5, 10–18. https://doi.org/10.1037/arc0000031 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Lynott, D., Corker, K. S., Wortman, J., Connell, L., Donnellan, M. B., Lucas, R. E. & O’Brien, K. (2014). Replication of “Experiencing physical warmth promotes interpersonal warmth” by Williams and Bargh (2008). Social Psychology, 45, 216–222. https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-9335/a000187 First citation in articleLink, Google Scholar

  • McCarthy, R. J. (2014). Close replication attempts of the heat priming-hostile perception effect. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 54, 165–169. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2014.04.014 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Mitchell, G. (2012). Revisiting truth or triviality: The external validity of research in the psychological laboratory. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7, 109–117. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691611432343 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Open Science Collaboration. (2012). An open, large-scale, collaborative effort to estimate the reproducibility of psychological science. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7, 657–660. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691612462588 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Open Science Collaboration. (2015). Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science. Science, 349, aac4716. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aac4716 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Richard, F. D., Bond, C. F. Jr. & Stokes-Zoota, J. J. (2003). One hundred years of social psychology quantitatively described. Review of General Psychology, 7, 331–363. https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.7.4.331 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Rouder, J. N., Speckman, P. L., Sun, D., Morey, R. D. & Iverson, G. (2009). Bayesian t tests for accepting and rejecting the null hypothesis. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 16, 225–237. https://doi.org/10.3758/PBR.16.2.225 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Wetzels, R., Matzke, D., Lee, M. D., Rouder, J. N., Iverson, G. J. & Wagenmakers, E.-J. (2011). Statistical evidence in experimental psychology: An empirical comparison of 855 t tests. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6, 291–298. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691611406923 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar

  • Williams, L. E. & Bargh, J. A. (2008). Experiencing physical warmth promotes interpersonal warmth. Science, 322, 606–607. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1162548 First citation in articleCrossref, Google Scholar