The Best of Tea

It’s sounds silly. Why would anyone like you more just because you drink tea?

Well, oddly enough, when you share a cup of hot tea with another person, that person is more likely to judge you as being a warm, friendly person than if you were to serve them a tall glass of ice water.

This information comes via a recent study carried out by Dr John Bargh, a professor of Psychology at Yale University. It appears that the physical sensation of being hot or cold affects our emotional assessment of our company at the time.

In the study, 41 volunteers were briefly tricked into holding either a warm cup of coffee or iced coffee as they went up in a lift to the laboratory, one by one, for the experiment.

Once in the laboratory, they were handed a pack of information about a stranger and asked to assess his personality.

Although every student was given the same description, their opinions varied enormously depending on whether they had been given a hot or a cold drink.
‘People who had briefly held the hot coffee cup perceived the target person as being significantly warmer than did those who had briefly held the cup of iced coffee[.]‘

Ok, so maybe the study used coffee. But the result would be the same with tea or any hot beverage. In fact, another portion of the study noted that even just holding a heat pad caused the same reaction.

Researchers also discovered that the sensation of warmth actually made people more generous.

[V]olunteers were asked to hold heated or frozen therapeutic pads under the guise of a medical product evaluation. After filling in a questionnaire about the pads, they were offered the choice of either a drink for themselves, or a voucher they could give to a friend.

People who had held the hot pack were more likely to ask for the gift voucher, while those who held the frozen pack tended to keep the gift.

The researchers believe physical warmth may unconsciously ‘prime’ the brain into feeling more positive.

So, tea really can make the world a better place — just make sure you drink it hot.