Breaking the ice: How physical warmth shapes social comparison consequences

Janina Steinmetz , Thomas Mussweiler

Social judgments take place in a concrete physical context. Recent research has explored how incidental physical experiences such as warmth influence social perception and behavior. However, we do not yet know if warmth affects self-evaluation. The present research seeks to examine this possibility by focusing on a central self-evaluative mechanism, namely social comparison. We hypothesized that physical warmth induces a general similarity focus that in turn fosters assimilative social comparison consequences and tested this in three studies. Study 1 established that warmth increases the perceived similarity of object pairs. In Study 2, participants compared themselves to a physically strong or weak standard. On warmer but not on colder days, they assimilated self-evaluations towards the target. Study 3 showed a similar pattern in a controlled laboratory setting. Together, these findings demonstrate that physical warmth shapes social comparison processes and as a consequence influences self-evaluation.

Mots clés: warmth; social comparison; similarity; assimilation

Domaines: Psychologie et comportements

Janina Steinmetz, Thomas Mussweiler. Breaking the ice: How physical warmth shapes social comparison consequences. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2011, ⟨10.1016/j.jesp.2011.03.022⟩. ⟨peer-00995256⟩