Researchers have been conducting studies which focus on the relation between physical and emotional states. One of the most recent studies has discovered a link between the warmth of one’s hands and their emotional reaction.

The study involved a popular and widely-consumed beverage and its container – a cup of steaming coffee. Apparently, when you hold a hot cup of coffee in your hand for even less than 30 seconds, you become more open and sociable.

During the study, the researchers noticed that people who held warm cups were more likely to warm up to the strangers they were socially interacting with. On the other hand, people who were given cold cups of, for instance, iced coffee were colder in their interaction.

The scientific conclusion of the study is that there is an undeniable cause-effect relationship between factors such as temperature and emotions. In other words, our body and feeling are not separate, but interlinked.

The problems that rise after this study are the endless manipulation possibilities that surface from learning that emotions may be influenced by physiological factors.

There are limits to what influence outside factors have on emotions. John A. Bargh, a psychologist with Yale University, stated that if he had a “nice, warm cup of coffee with Adolf Hitler, I'm still not going to like him."

Another experiment involved a number of people holding either warm or cold cups of coffee. They were then asked to rate a stranger’s personality on a scale from one to seven.

Before being introduced to the stranger, the subjects were told that he was skillful, industrious, determined, practical and cautious. The results didn’t stray far from expectations: those with warm hands rated the man’s personality with a score of 4.7, while the ones who had held a cold cup gave him a score of 4.3.