Temperature and Thinking! The hotter it is….

Keivabu and Widmann found that “hot [out of comfort range] days reduce politicians’ language complexity, but not cold days. . . . Our data consists of all parliamentary speeches in Washington D.C. (United States, 1950–2017), London (United Kingdom, 1989–2019), Vienna (Austria, 1996–2018), Amsterdam (Netherlands, 1996–2018), Wellington (New Zealand, 1989–2019), Copenhagen (Denmark, 1996–2018), Madrid (Spain, 1996–2018), Bonn (West Germany, 1950–1999), and Berlin (Germany, 1999–2019) comprising 7,425,184 speeches from 28,523 politicians. . . . We can observe the largest decrease in the language proficiency of politicians at high mean temperatures (24°C–27°C and >27°C). . . . The results highlight heat to affect all politicians without any major differences by age.”
Risto Keivabu and Tobias Widmann. 2024. “The Effect of Temperature on Language Complexity: Evidence from Seven Million Parliamentary Speeches.” iScience, no. 110106, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2024.110106