Feeling colder than others around you? Well, this might be a sign of loneliness or feeling socially excluded according to two experiments performed by University of Toronto psychologists Chen-Bo Zhong, PhD, and Geoffrey J. Leonardelly, PhD.

In one of the experiments, the researchers asked 65 students to do a series of tasks. First of all, they requested the students to recall a situation in which they felt either left out or like one of the gang. Further, they were asked to estimate the temperature of the room they were in. It has to be mentioned that the room temperature was always the same. However, the students perceived the temperature differently and more than that those who remembered feeling lonely estimated the temperature of being much lower than those who remembered feeling included in a group or social support.

The second experiment involved 52 students who were asked to play a computerized ball-toss game, in which they had to throw a ball back and forth with three other figures on the computer screen. They believed the other figures on the screen were other students playing from remote locations when in fact, a computer program was running the game. This program excluded half of the study participants, throwing them the ball a couple of times in the beginning, then ignoring them altotogether. At the end of the game, the participants were asked about their preferences for a variety of foods and drinks. Surprisingly, the researchers discovered that those who had been isolated in the computer game showed a strong preference for the soup and coffee over the other items. Those included in the game showed no interest in “warm” foods and drinks.

“It’s striking that people preferred hot coffee and soup more when socially excluded. Out research suggests that warm chicken soup may be a literal coping mechanism for social isolation,” Leonardelli said.

“We know that being excluded is psychologically painful. When we talk about social experiences we usually think of them as abstract ideas, like morality or social exclusion, but ... these perceptions are not as abstract as you think. These perceptions are actually deeply connected to physiological experiences and bodily perceptions. Our social experience on whether we've been socially included or rejected and isolated actually has consequences on physiological experiences so that we literally feel cold,” said Chen-Bo Zhong, assistant professor in the department of organizational behavior and human resource management at the University of Toronto.

There seems to be an explanation for what exactly makes us feel cold when feeling left out, researchers say. A brain area called insula controls body temperature and psychological state and probably here is where the physical and emotional feelings meet each other.

Besides feeling cold, social isolation or loneliness is also known to induce anxiety and depression and also activates brain areas linked to the experience of physical pain.

Both experiments appear in the September edition of the journal Psychological Science.