Hot weather slows down your thinking: a new MIT study (n=31,000) finds that for every 1.8F° increase in temperature above 62°F , people’s performance on a popular brain-training math test dropped by 0.13%.

The heat affected participants by slowing down their ability to think quickly, resulting in fewer correct answers and more time spent solving each problem. “The driver for the lower performance,” Krebs writes, “seems to be slower problem-solving rather than higher error proneness.”

Something something Southern United States

Can we get a Monster Mathematician here to clean up those numbers for human consumption?

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10640-024-00881-y

> I find that, above a threshold of 16.5 C (61.7F), a 1 C (1.8F) increase in outside air temperature leads to a performance reduction of 0.13%. The effect is mostly driven by individuals living in relatively cold areas, who are less adapted to hot temperatures.

So there’s more to it than that, specifically individuals who are “less adapted” to hot temperatures. Meaning spending more time in hot temperatures and adapting to it will see less performance reduction.

The abstract also says specifically outdoor air temperature, but doesn’t make it clear if the participants are doing the tests in that outdoor air temperature, or are in climate-controlled buildings. Perhaps someone that has read through the full body can answer that.

So, our brains really are just fleshy computers. Those that acclimate yo the heat have essentially added extra cooling fans for their processor.

Even if it’s 120F, that’s only a 4% drop in performance compared to performance at 62F.