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"Participants in the warm room used more concrete, physical language to describe the film and reported feeling socially closer to the experimenter than did the participants in a cold room... participants in a warm room were more likely to recognise the "relational similarity" between objects." Related to temperature metaphors, e.g. "Holding warm feelings toward someone" and "giving someone the cold shoulder". Actual study at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19732385

This article talks about how people across many cultures are generally better at describing warm colors than cool colors. A study they conducted supports their hypothesis that people are better at communicating warm colors than cool colors because most of the objects they see are warm in color, while backgrounds tend to be cool in color. Therefore, since people are more likely to describe an object than the background behind it, they have developed a larger vocabulary for warm colors. The article also says that interestingly, industrialized cultures have more words for colors than non-industrialized cultures. For example, in English there are 11 color words that basically everyone is familiar with whereas in the language Tsimane', there are only three color words that everyone knows.

Recent studies suggest that metaphors are more than just fancy literary devices and that there is a psychological basis for linking cold with feelings of social isolation. Psychologists Chen-Bo Zhong and Geoffrey Leonardelli from the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management wanted to test the idea that social isolation might generate a physical feeling of coldness. In their first experiment, they divided a group of volunteers into two groups. One group recalled a personal experience in which they had been socially excluded-rejection from a club, for example. This was meant to tap into their feelings of isolation and loneliness. The other group recalled an experience in which they had been accepted into a group. Afterwards, volunteers were asked to estimate the temperature in the room. Those who recalled memories of being ostracized experienced the ambient temperature of the room as colder. In a second experiment, researchers triggered feelings of exclusion by having volunteers play a computer-simulated ball tossing game. The game was designed so that some of the volunteers had the ball tossed to them many times, but others were left out. Afterwards, all the volunteers rated the desirability of certain foods and beverages: hot coffee, crackers, an ice-cold Coke, an apple, and hot soup. The findings were striking. As reported in the September issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, the "unpopular" volunteers who had been ostracized during the computer game were much more likely than the others to want either hot soup or hot coffee. Their preference for warm food and drinks presumably resulted from physically feeling cold as a result of being excluded. "It's striking that people preferred hot coffee and soup more when socially excluded," Leonardelli said. "Our research suggests that warm chicken soup may be a literal coping mechanism for social isolation."

Dr. Geary explains how metaphors are used to veil the true meaning of what one is trying to say in hopes to either deceive a group or to promote good feelings among a population. Consider his examples of Bush's "Axis of Evil" and Obama's desire to extend a warm hand to countries across the globe. This book sounds much like Steven Pinker's lecture for the RSA Animate video, "Language as a Window into Human Nature", and both the video and book aren't too different; both simply look at the same topic in different ways (innuendo vs. metaphor - though these hardly seem different if one were to really think about it). Link to Pinker's RSA Animate: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-son3EJTrU

Let's face it: There are some things we just can't face. Life's too short. Somebody's too sensitive. And the subject - whatever it is, although lately it's been whatever - is too third-rail dangerous. Border walls, charter schools, closing Guantánamo, global warming, that Al Jazeera documentary claiming Peyton Manning used performance-enhancing drugs, Hillary Clinton, #OscarsSoWhite: Why bring any of this up?

This article talks about hygge and what it means to Danes. It talks about how hygge has shaped policies in Denmark, notably its anti-refugee stance. The article talks about the explosion of popularity of the word.

How to Become a Motivational Speaker (Even If You Don't Know Where to Start) Recently I was flying from California to Oklahoma. I had an excess of frequent flyer miles and I was yearning for a warm toilette, so I upgraded to first class.