Ever feel a chill when someone rebuffs you?Well, psychologists Dr. Chen-Bo Zhong and Dr. Geoffrey Leonardelli - from the University of Toronto - tested the idea if social isolation really generates feelings of coldness.
They designed a study where volunteers had to estimate the temperature of a room on the pretense that the building's maintenance staff wanted that information.
Those who were told to think about a socially isolating experience when entering the room gave colder temperature estimates. In other words, recalled memories of being ostracized actually made people experience the temperature as colder than those who were not instructed to imagine such experiences. "We found that the experience of social exclusion literally feels cold," Zhong said.
