Study: Working in Warmer Temperatures Improves Women’s Cognitive Performance and Productivity
In a study published in the journal PLoS ONE, a team of researchers from the United States and Germany found that women performed better on math and verbal tasks at higher temperatures, while the opposite was true for men: as temperatures increased, so did women’s performance on tasks; when temperatures were lowered, men performed better, although the relationship between temperature and men’s performance was less pronounced.
“It’s been documented that women like warmer indoor temperatures than men — but the idea until now has been that it’s a matter of personal preference,” said co-author Dr. Tom Chang, a researcher in the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business.
“What we found is it’s not just whether you feel comfortable or not, but that your performance on things that matter — in math and verbal dimensions, and how hard you try — is affected by temperature.”
Between September-December 2017, 24 groups of 23-25 students (542 participants total) took math, verbal and logic tests in a room cooled or heated to one of a range of temperatures between 61.1 and 90.6 degrees Fahrenheit (16.2-32.6 degrees Celsius), receiving cash rewards based on the number of questions correctly answered.
The experiment was conducted in Berlin, Germany; 41% of the participating students were female.
In the math test, participants were asked to add up five two-digit numbers without using a calculator. For the verbal task, participants were asked to build as many German words as possible given a set of ten letters. In the last task, the cognitive reflection test, participants were given a set of questions framed so that the intuitive answer was the wrong answer.
The researchers found a meaningful relationship between room temperature and how well participants scored on the math and verbal tasks, while temperature had no effect for men and women on the cognitive reflection test.
“One of the most surprising things we learned is this isn’t about the extremes of temperature,” Dr. Chang said.
“It’s not like we’re getting to freezing or boiling hot. Even if you go from 60 to 75 degrees Fahrenheit, which is a relatively normal temperature range, you still see a meaningful variation in performance.”
“The increase in female cognitive performance at warmer temperatures appears to be driven largely by an increase in the number of submitted answers, which we interpret as evidence that the increased performance is driven in part by an increase in effort.”
Similarly, the decrease in male cognitive performance was partially driven by a decrease in the number of submitted answers.
The increase in female cognitive performance is larger and more precisely estimated than the decrease in male performance.
“Our results potentially raise the stakes for the battle of the thermostat, suggesting that it is not just about comfort, but also about cognitive performance and productivity,” said Dr. Chang and his co-author, Dr. Agne Kajackaite from the WZB Berlin Social Science Center, Germany.
“Given the relative effect sizes, our results suggest that in gender-balanced workplaces, temperatures should be set significantly higher than current standards.”
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T.Y. Chang & A. Kajackaite. 2019. Battle for the thermostat: Gender and the effect of temperature on cognitive performance. PLoS ONE 14 (5): e0216362; doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0216362
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