Warm hearted

Is there any problem so weighty that it can’t be solved to mutual satisfaction by sharing a nice warm cup of tea or coffee? Can’t you and your neighbour work out who will rake the leaves over a cuppa? Wouldn’t football matches degenerate into less brawls if the players supped together on chai lattes before the game? If divorce lawyers brought the warring parties cups of tea to share as they sat around the settlement table perhaps in some cases discord would dissolve and marriages might be saved? If the Israeli and Palestinian leaders could be brought together over a latte, flat white and biscotti then mightn’t some way forward be found? Yes, a shared cup of something hot can achieve wonders and it seems the power of the shared cup may not lie only in the conviviality of the situation but in the warmth of the vessels.

This was highlighted in new research where the subjects took part in the “Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma”, a game used by psychologists to measure subject’s willingness to cooperate with others. In the game the subjects are presented in a scenario where they and another participant are prisoners. They are told that the police do not have enough information to convict them on a serious charge but do have enough for a lesser charge. In the Prisoner’s Dilemma they are presented with four options.

The subjects are told, if you confess and your partner (the other participant) denies taking part in the crime, you go free and your partner goes to prison for ten years. Equally, if your partner confesses and you deny participating in the crime, you go to prison for ten years and your partner goes free. However, if both confess they will serve six years each and if both deny taking part in the crime, both go to prison for six months.

In repeating the exercise participants can see how their partner is behaving and they are given the opportunity to cooperate…or not.

In this study subjects took part in the Prisoner’s Dilemma but were given either hot or cold objects to hold before they did so. The results showed that people holding warm objects cooperated significantly more often than people holding cold objects.

It is probably to do with the part of the brain associated with detecting interpersonal connection, or warmth, effectively “piggybacking” on the same part of the brain involved in detecting physical warmth. So you stimulate that part of the brain with one and you stimulate the other as well. That has translated linguistically into phrases like “I warmed to her” or on the negative side, “I’ve gone cold on him”.

So if you are negotiating your next contract, you might be well advised to ensure that your boss’s tea has not gone cold, and if you suspect it has, make an excuse that you have spotted a blemish on it and use your breath to warm her cup.