Hot or not? Thermal reactions to social contact

Abstract

Previous studies using thermal imaging have suggested that face and body temperature increase during periods of sexual arousal. Additionally, facial skin temperature changes are associated with other forms of emotional arousal, including fear and stress. This study investigated whether interpersonal social contact can elicit facial temperature changes. Study 1: infrared images were taken during a standardized interaction with a same-and opposite-sex experimenter using skin contact in a number of potentially high-intimate (face and chest) and low-intimate (arm and palm) locations. Facial skin temperatures significantly increased from baseline during the face and chest contact, and these temperature shifts were larger when contact was made by an opposite-sex experimenter. Study 2: the topography of facial temperature change was investigated in five regions: forehead, periorbital, nose, mouth and cheeks. Increased temperature in the periorbital, nose and mouth regions predicted overall facial temperature shifts to social contact. Our findings demonstrate skin temperature changes are a sensitive index of arousal during interpersonal interactions.

Nasal temperature drop in response to a playback of conspecific fights in chimpanzees: A thermo-imaging study

“…Thermo-imaging could capture how the individuals behaviorally react to social stress in a complex social interaction. Forth, in humans, sexual arousal causes the increase in nasal and perioral temperatures (Hahn et al, 2012;Merla & Romani, 2007), an opposite effect that we observed in this study. Sexual interest is one of the major behavioral drives in primates; yet its physiological and psychological underpinnings remain relatively unclear (Deaner, Khera, & Platt, 2005).…”

“…driving (Or & Duffy, 2007), numeric task (Kang, McGinley, McFadyen, & Babski-Reeves, 2006)] decreased the nasal (and perinasal) temperature. Sexual arousal, induced by intimate touch (Hahn, Whitehead, Albrecht, Lefevre, & Perrett, 2012), interpersonal proximity and eye contact , and viewing erotic movies (Merla & Romani, 2007), caused the opposite effect; the increase in nasal (and perioral) temperature due to the increased blood flow. In monkeys, presentation of potentially fearful or stressful stimuli, such as a threatening experimenter, videos of screaming and threatening monkeys, caused the decrease in nasal temperature (Kuraoka & Nakamura, 2011;Nakayama, Goto, Kuraoka, & Nakamura, 2005).…”

Thermal infrared imaging in psychophysiology: Potentialities and limits

“…Unlike conventional methods of autonomic monitoring, fITI provides versatility. It enables recording of perspiration (Ebisch et al., ; Pavlidis et al., ), cutaneous and subcutaneous temperature variations (Merla, Di Donato, Rossini, & Romani, ; Hahn, Whitehead, Albrecht, Lefevre, & Perrett, ), blood flow (Puri, Olson, Pavlidis, Levine, & Starren, ), cardiac pulse (Garbey, Sun, Merla, & Pavlidis, ), as well as metabolic breathing patterns (Pavlidis et al., ). The reliability of this tool has been repeatedly proven with the use of simultaneous recordings grounding fITI on gold standard methods, such as electrocardiography (ECG), piezoelectric thorax stripe for breathing monitoring, nasal thermistors, skin conductance, or galvanic skin response (GSR).…”

“…To perform thermal imaging recordings, researchers have used camera models of different resolution. The majority of studies used a camera with a resolution of 256 × 256 (Merla & Romani, ) to 320 × 240 (Calvin & Duffy, ; Ebisch et al., ; Hahn et al., ; Ioannou et al., ; Kang, McGinley, McFadyen, & Babski‐Reeves, ; Kuraoka & Nakamura, ; Pavlidis, Eberhardt, & Levine, ; Pavlidis et al., , ; Puri et al., ; Shastri, Papadakis, Tsiamyrtzis, Bass, & Pavlidis, ; Vianna & Carrive, ; Zhu et al., ). Recordings, however, of higher image quality such as 640 × 480 (Gane et al., ; Manini et al., ) to 640 × 512 (Pavlidis et al., ; Shastri et al., ) were relatively more rare.…”

Embodied motivation: Using a goal systems framework to understand the preference for social and physical warmth.

“…Similarly, Ijzerman and Semin (2009) found that participants seated in a warm room report feeling interpersonally closer to the experimenter than do those seated in a colder room. Conversely, experiencing social rejection makes people feel physically cold (IJzerman et al, 2012;Zhong & Leonardelli, 2008), experiencing social connection makes people feel physically warm (Hahn et al, 2012;Inagaki & Eisenberger, 2013), and thinking about a target's sociability traits increases estimates of room temperature (Szymkow et al, 2013).…”