We are currently conducting a meta-analysis looking at the influence of temperature on prosocial and antisocial behaviour. If you have anything that fits this description (details below) I would be grateful if you could email me (d.lynott@lancaster.ac.uk) or Katie Corker (corkerk@kenyon.edu). We have already done an extensive literature trawl, so we are mainly looking for unpublished work in this area - this could be work from many years ago, work that is under review/in press or data that has been collected and analysed but not formally written up yet.
The Specifics
We are specifically interested in experimental (or quasi-experimental studies) that manipulate either ambient temperature (e.g., hot vs cold conditions; across a range of temperatures) or temperature primes (e.g., hot/cold packs, hot/cold drinks, hot/cold seat pads), where the behaviour of interest could be classified as prosocial or antisocial. An example of prosocial behaviour is Williams & Bargh (2008, Study 2), where participants chose between selecting a gift for themselves (self-interested) or a friend (prosocial). See also Ijzerman et al (2013), where children donate stickers to another child. And example of anti-social behaviour might be where participants have the opportunity to punish another participant or target individual. For example, Fay and Maner (2014) had participants direct noise blasts at partners.
If you believe your study meets these criteria, we are requesting details of your study, including the study design, sample sizes per condition, means and standard deviations per condition. Alternatively, if you are happy to provide us with the raw data and information on the coding of variables, we can extract the required data.
Note: We will only use the data for the purpose of the meta-analysis and we will delete the data afterwards.
If you have any questions about this study, please do not hesitate to get in touch. Thank you in advance for your help and any work you might contribute.
Best wishes,
Dermot Lynott, Katie Corker, Louise Connell, Kerry O’Brien.
