Temperature and emotions: Effects of physical temperature on responses to emotional advertising

- Physical temperature moderates consumers' liking of emotional stimuli, e.g., emotional appeals in advertising.
- Consumers like emotionally warm stimuli more than emotionally cold ones when they feel physically cold.
- Consumers like emotionally cold stimuli more than emotionally warm ones when they feel physically warm.
- This study also addresses the underlying mechanism and reveals that emotions serve as a homeostatic response.
- Firms should adjust the emotional content of advertising in response to ambient temperature.

In colloquial speech, people frequently link emotions to temperature (e.g., “warm love” or “cold fear”). Likewise, in the business world, the use of emotionally warm and cold appeals reflects an ongoing trend in advertising. However, the conditions in which emotionally warm versus cold appeals are more effective remain unclear. Drawing on homeostasis theory, the authors investigate whether and why feeling physically warm versus cold influences the effectiveness of emotional advertising appeals. Using both laboratory experiments and field data, they show that emotions play a homeostatic role. Specifically, they demonstrate that the effects of particular emotional stimuli depend not only on physical temperatures per se but on homeostasis/thermoregulation. Namely, when consumers are below their homeostatic optimum (i.e., physically cold), they perceive emotionally cold stimuli less favorably (than emotionally warm stimuli) as these stimuli bring them further away from the optimum. Likewise, when consumers are above their homeostatic optimum (i.e., physically hot), they perceive emotionally warm stimuli less favorably (than emotionally cold stimuli) as these stimuli bring them further away from the optimum. Finally, once consumers are at their homeostatic optimum, they perceive both emotionally warm and cold stimuli similarly favorably. These results have implications for a wide range of marketing activities (in particular advertising) across seasons and international markets.