Test performance, gender, and temperature

(credit: Nest)

As we move from a season marked by unstoppable heating units and into one dominated by aggressive air conditioning. Figuring out how to optimize the thermostat involves a balancing of individual comfort and energy efficiency. But a new study suggests that there's an additional factor that should feed into decisions: the performance of any employees or students who happen to be subjected to the whims of whoever has access to the thermostat.

Unexpectedly, the new results show that men and women don't respond to different temperatures in the same way. And, in doing so, they raise questions about just what we've been measuring when other studies have looked at gender-specific differences in performance.

You’re making me cold!

As someone whose mother admonished him to put on sweaters because my bare arms "made her cold," I'm well aware that there's a long-standing cliché about the sexes engaging in a battle of the thermostat. What I hadn't realized is that the existence of that battle is backed by data. Tom Chang and Agne Kajackaite are able to cite four references for the tendency of women to prefer their indoor environments warmer than men do. Chang and Kajackaite, however, found that the academic literature is silent on a related issue: do women have a good reason for wanting it warmer?