Warm Hands, Warm Hearts Do you describe people warm or cold in your language? We, Taiwanese who speak Mandarin, describe bad people as cold people, and are likely to describe good people as warm people. Interesting thing is, English speaker do the same things. They also use words "warm" and "cold" to describe people's personality. Recently I read an article about warm hands and warm hearts. Scientists found that there is a link between warm hands and a warm heart. If people who warmed their hands first are likely to be generous in their judgement. So that's how they conducted researches. First, the scientists want to know: does temperature affect emotions? They gave some volunteers cups of warm coffee, and gave other volunteers cups of iced coffee. The participants were given some information of an unknown person, and were asked to describe the unknown person. It turns out that volunteers who held cups of warm coffee were more likely to be kind, or generous on the unknown person than those with cups of iced coffee. There was a another experiment. Participants were asked to hold either a heating pad or cold pad. After the test, they could choose a reward for themselves or a gift for a friend. The study shows the participants who held heating pads were more likely to give their friends gifts. Those participants who held cold pads were more likely to get rewards for themselves. Scientist believe that when we describe people as either cold or warm, it taps into emotions that date back to our childhood. It reminds us of feelings when we are children. Maybe that make us think of our mother. Since most of us were cuddling in our mothers' arms. These are very interesting experiments. But I kind of doubt them. Because the scientists didn't mention the climate during experiments. If I am asked to hold a hot coffee on a hot day, I might not be happy, since I have lived in a subtropical region. When I am writing the articles, it is April afternoon, and my room's temperature is 31 degree centigrade now.