Cognitive Design

According to a recent study  by scientists at Yale and the University of Colorado, how we rate a stranger’s personality can be influenced by the temperature of a cup of coffee (or other beverage) we are holding. Warm coffee means I will tend to be trusting and see the person as warm. Ice or cold coffee has the opposite effect.

 The temperature of the coffee is priming my emotions, not too surprising given the embodied nature of cognition.   Now we know why warm cookies, heated car seats, hot cocoa and a warm glass of milk all seem to be more than physically comforting. 

This finding offers tentative guidance for the cognitive designer intent on creating artifacts that generate a sense of trust, emotional warmth and soothingness:

Heat them up!

This entry was posted on Friday, October 24th, 2008 at 11:40 pm and is filed under Design, Technique. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.