Taking the temperature of time: The influence of temperature on people's metaphorical perspectives on time through emotion

Space provides the conceptual scaffolding for the understanding of time. Customarily, the movement of events in time is metaphorically conceptualized from two spatial perspectives: the ego‐moving perspective that envisions an observer moving towards a stationary future and the time‐moving perspective that envisages the future moving towards a stationary observer. Extensive work has shown that emotions of opposite valence can yield contrary temporal perspective preferences. Relatedly, much evidence suggests that physical warmth and coldness prompt antithetical emotional evaluations. Threading together these two strands of insights, the current research explored whether ambient temperatures would influence people's metaphorical perspectives on time through a common link to emotion. Study 1 suggested that when deciphering two temporally ambiguous statements, people in warmer spring preferred the ego‐moving perspective, whilst those in colder winter favoured the time‐moving perspective. To determine a causal effect and test the hypothesized underlying mechanism of emotion, Study 2 examined the priming effect of temperature on temporal perspective preferences and emotional states. The results showed that differential temperatures induced opposite emotional responses, which in turn prompted diametric perspectives on time. These findings were replicated in Study 3 using an alternative measure of perspectives on time. Study 4 further validated the mediating role of emotion in the temperature–time relationship. Taken together, the current findings evince a unidirectional relationship between the incidental environmental factor of temperature and the metaphorical representation of time and accentuate the roles of sensory perception and emotional experience in temporal cognition.