It’s True: Women Perform Better in Warmer Temperatures

It’s True:  Women Perform Better in Warmer Temperatures

Ladies, listen up: it is not in your heads. You’re all as special as you’re different, which is why your productivity levels should not be measured in the same environment as men’s. What are we talking about, you ask? Well, it’s all about the room temperature in your office, and it’s finally been proven that women are more productive in warmer rooms and men more productive in cooler spaces. So, if you’ve had this argument with your colleagues before, but haven’t got answers, ask them to read this.

The study

In a recent study, it was proven that your office temperature has an actual impact on your productivity and your work output. So, if you’ve always found yourself working well in the warm space away from your colleagues and if you’ve completed more siding installation jobs in warm weather than cold/ cooler weather, there is a scientific reason for that.

While scientists have for a long time determined that most offices have their office temperatures set lower than they should, especially in the warmer months, recent findings prove that these scientists’ claims were not ill-founded. Women’s productivity is affected by temperature, and the study published in the Journal Plos One indicated that women performed better in the common cognitive tests when the tests were performed in warmer rooms or rooms whose temperatures averaged the temperatures outdoors.

In this study carried out in Berlin, 540 college students were asked to sit through several tests in a room set to different temperatures ranging from 61-91 degrees Fahrenheit. In each scenario, the participants had to answer simple and common logical problems, as well as math questions involving 2-digit addition problems completed without a calculator. They were also required to unscramble a combo of letters to form as many German words as possible.

The results of this study revealed that the warmer temperatures allowed the female participants to answer m0ore of the verbal and math tests correctly. Also, the warmer temperatures increased their overall accuracy on the tests. The findings also revealed that a temperature increase of only one degree Celsius resulted in a 2% increase in the total number of math problems that were solved accurately by women. These findings correlated to a 1% increase in their performance in the verbal tasks.

Men, on the other hand, performed better in cooler temperatures. It was also noted that the performance of men in cooler temperatures was not as drastic as seen in the female subjects.

The researchers also revealed that working under low temperatures, the gender gap is significantly huge when it comes to the completion of math tasks and that there was no gender gap when it comes to performing math tasks as the temperatures increased.

While more research on this is necessary, given the fact that not all women perform well in warmer temperatures and not all men work well in cooler temperatures, it’s clear that office spaces should not be cooler than necessary in the warmer months if the productivity of women is to be taken seriously. The temperature should be just right for the productivity of both males and females.