According to a study published in the scientific journal Plos One and written by Tom Chang, associate professor of Finance and Business Economics at the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California (USC), and Agne Kajackaite, from the WZB Center for Social Science In Berlin, women work better with higher temperatures.
According to a study published in the scientific journal Plos One and written by Tom Chang, associate professor of Finance and Business Economics at the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California (USC), and Agne Kajackaite, from the WZB Center for Social Science In Berlin, women work better with higher temperatures.
"It has been documented that women like higher indoor temperatures than men, but until now we thought it was a matter of personal preference," explains Chung . "What we have discovered is that it is not just a matter of whether you feel comfortable or not, but that performance in subjects such as mathematics and verbal dimensions is affected by temperature," he adds.
Who works best with heat? Men or women?
Until now, there have been survey-based analyzes that suggested that women preferred to work in higher temperatures than men, but this was thought to be a matter of comfort. However, this research goes one step further by verifying that the higher the temperature, the better the cognitive performance and productivity of women. While in the case of men, the opposite happened. Specifically, the study observed that temperature affected when performing mathematical and verbal tasks.
The researchers stressed that one of the most surprising things was that for these performance effects to be noticeable, it was not necessary for the temperatures to be extreme, but rather for a moderate increase of between 5 and 8 degrees , the difference in the performance of the women was significant enough.
So what about the air conditioning?
A summer classic in most offices is the battle over the thermostat. This study raises the need to review the temperature at which the air conditioning is set, but it is not the only one. According to another study published in Nature , since women have a slower metabolism, the formula used to set the temperature in the workplace could overestimate the heat production of the female body by 35%.
"People invest a lot to make sure their workers are comfortable and highly productive. This study indicates that if you are only concerned about money or the performance of your workers, you may want to increase the temperature in your office buildings. " Chang concludes.
