Title: Air conditioning energy: AC saves lives and causes less climate change than heating.
Headings: Hot and Bothered
Hot and Bothered
Air conditioning isn’t bad for you or even (relatively) for the planet.
By Daniel Engber
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Content: Even among this smaller group, the researchers found no effect of temperature on a second measure of productivity, “mouse-click rate.” Meanwhile, other studies done in natural work settings find that overheating has a large—and decidedly negative—effect on employees. One recent paper looked at 70 factory workers exposed to different temperatures and found that those in hotter conditions made more mistakes and showed signs of temporary cognitive impairment. Controlled experiments in the lab generally come to the same conclusion. And if you go by research from Japan, where office thermostats are set at 82 degrees during the summer, some two-thirds of employees describe themselves as being uncomfortable and unproductive in July and August. Advertisement
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Yet the Times op-ed doesn’t stop at claiming that AC makes us unproductive. It also alleges that too much cooling turns us “untrusting, uncommunicative, and unfriendly.” There’s a hint of truth in this: Research on what is sometimes called “embodied cognition” has found that temperature cues (an ice pack on your hand, a heating pad on your chair, a cold or hot beverage in your hand) can make a person slightly more or less inclined to seek out social contact or inclusion. But the nature and magnitude of this effect varies quite a bit, depending on such factors as the mood and situation of the subject and her baseline personality.