There is a con­nec­tion between tem­per­at­ure and trust

There is a connection between temperature and trust. If you grew up in high temperatures, you have on average more trust in other people than if you grew up in cooler climates.

That is the surprising conclusion of a major study carried out by PhD Fellow Karin Hansson from CBS together with Alexander Popov from the European Central Bank. Their results have been published in the international journal, the Journal of Economic Psychology.

The higher level of trust is not only directed towards other people, but also towards political and non-political institutions such as the government, political parties, courts, banks and churches.

“Our data show that people from areas with average temperatures below 0 °C are 23.4 percentage points less likely to show trust in other people. This is compared with a similar person who has grown up in an area with average temperatures above 15 °C in the same country,” says Karin Hansson.

Conclusion challenges economic theory

Karin Hansson and Alexander Popov have analysed data from more than 24,000 citizens from 27 European and Central Asian countries. They have divided the countries into 298 regions and controlled for demographic, socio-economic and other factors that could play a role.

“Previously, countries have been compared with each other, but our approach has been different,” Karin Hansson says.

What is special about their study is that they only compare people within the same country, which means that all the different national factors that might otherwise confuse the picture – historical, cultural and political – remain constant. The differences in trust that the researchers find are therefore not determined by these factors,

and their results challenge the conventional economic theory, which until now has claimed that harsh living conditions such as cold promote trust, because historically people have had to cooperate to survive.

Input from other sciences is important

In fact, the researchers’ findings align more closely with theories from more recent natural science and social psychology, which suggest that physical warmth fosters trust between people and creates a feeling of togetherness and security.

Karin Hansson finds this fact interesting. 

“I am an economist myself, but I think it is healthy to be challenged by other disciplines. For example, I think that in some contexts it may be relevant to combine aspects of psychology with economic research,” she points out, adding about the study:

“Trust is a very complex concept that occupies economists. We know that trust is part of every economic transaction, and that it plays a central role when citizens have to make financial decisions. And as the international community develops, it is clear to believe that trust – and the lack thereof – will come to play an even greater role in global trade.”

Climate change and behaviour

Karin Hansson also emphasises the importance of gaining a better understanding of how temperatures and behaviour interact in a time of climate change and migration. 

Therefore, she hopes that at some point she will have the opportunity to expand the study and possibly involve Scandinavia. In the present study, she and Alexander Popov focus primarily on countries that have undergone political and economic transitions since the 1990s, as they are particularly interesting when you want to understand how societal conditions, institutions and social norms are affected.

These countries include Italy, Greece, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Slovenia.