You’re constantly inundated with information about global warming wreaking havoc on wildlife, plants, oceans, human health, and everything else unfortunate enough to be under our sun. Do you feel angry? Does it just make you want to punch or steal or shoot something?
Well, it could be less your reaction to the news and more just the warming weather itself. A new study by Canadian criminal psychologist Ehor Boyanowsky posits that crime rises in correlation with temperature.
Boyanowsky learned through a series of experiments conducted at 10, 20, and 30 degrees Celsius [50, 68, and 86 degrees Fahrenheit], that when circumstances cause a person to become irritated or aggressive, that aggression will be heightened by heat.
Using a thermometer that fits in the tympanic membrane of the eardrum, he was able to measure the temperature changes in the brains of a number of people subjected to a variety of stressful situations at the three temperatures …
And what he found was that every time a subject was insulted, the temperature of his or her anterior hypothalamus would rise. And the hotter the ambient temperature, the longer the brain temperature remained elevated.
Um, I think just having something stuck in my eardrum would be enough to piss me off.
Boyanowsky also advises the anger-prone not to wear helmets, as that makes the brain hotter. And as I fully expect that we all will be wearing helmets constantly in the future, to protect ourselves from small meteorites, falling dead birds, and “eco-terrorist” attacks, that could be a problem.
