How heat could change the nature of the work

WThe hen A work room is hot and sticky, it can be difficult to concentrate – and people can become grumpy quickly. While many studies have examined the impact of heat on the ability of individuals to work, few have studied the impact that higher temperatures have on teams.

Now, a new article notes that teamwork is even breaking down with a modest increase in temperature, due to increased irritability and communication failures. The effects were particularly strong in mixed teams and gender teams with different academic experience.

Teevrat Garg, economics researcher at the University of San Diego University of California’s policies and strategies, and his colleagues studied undergraduate computer students in Dacca, Bangladesh. They were assigned to work, individually or in pairs, on programming tasks, interior parts with temperatures of 75 degrees Fahrenheit or 84 degrees Fahrenheit – temperatures commonly found inside in office environments, says Garg. Compared to the outside, temperatures were still modest – summer heat outside Bangladesh can hover much more than 105 degrees Fahrenheit.

“It is not that the heat aggravates me in my work, but in the tasks that require teamwork, we note that this rupture occurs because heat increases irritability and other forms of interpersonal communication ruptures”, explains Teevrat Garg, economics researcher at the school of global policy and strategy of the University of California of San Diego.

“I think it will change the nature of the work.”

Even when heat increases were modest, researchers saw effects. Students were responsible for adding features to the software code. In the teams, one was the typing code of the “pilot”, and the other was the “browser” that watched the process. In the cool rooms, the teams were more productive than individuals.

For workers who get up alone, the results have not changed in the warmer rooms – in fact, they have slightly successful in the warmer room. This makes sense, say the researchers, because previous research on the impacts of heat show that the negative effects do not launch before the temperatures are above 84 degrees.

But for the teams in the warmer rooms, things started to break down. They were about half of the most likely to finish the task of the code, compared to the cooler rooms teams. They were also more likely to request a new partner. For male and women mixed teams, or who had students of different academic years, increasing the heat the most has changed the group’s dynamics. Research was published in the journal The review of the economy and statistics.

Research has implications for countries – such as India and Bangladesh – where the number of people involved in the work known as knowledge increases in parallel with the temperatures of the increase, says Garg. Technological interventions such as air conditioning and air purifiers can improve the physical environment, but managers can also have to change the way they encourage people to collaborate. This could mean assigning individual tasks when temperatures are high and reserve collaboration for when it’s cooler, he said. “I think it will change the nature of the work.”

“This work is at the forefront of scientific research on the impacts of extreme heat,” explains Alanca, associate professor at the University of California, Institute of Environment and Sustainability of the University of Los Angeles who studies the economy, climate change and human health and was not involved in the study. It gives two reasons: firstly, experimental conception means that the results can be interpreted as a cause and effect relationship. And secondly, researchers carefully examine individual performance and the team, with a view to how the heat compromises collaboration. Generally, previous research has focused on individual performance such as test results, as individual results are easier to observe than collaborations.

The complete image of Heat’s impacts on cognition is just starting to emerge, through new works that occur between researchers, explains Barca. “Heat can have an impact on collaboration because heat has an impact on hormonal balances or can cause physical discomfort in a way that could make work in close collaboration difficult,” he said, adding that research suggests that heat increases violence, which could be an indication of how heat affects interpersonal dynamics.

In addition, access to air conditioning can not only be healthy – it can be essential to maintain a healthy economy, says Barca.

Garg adds that it is important to study heat and teamwork in different places to understand how general the results are. “It is interesting to see, not only that the physical environment affects the way people work, but also the ways through which it happens.”

Lead image: Windawake / Shutterstock

• Katharine Gammon

  Published on July 16, 2025

  Katharine Gammon is an independent scientific writer based in Santa Monica, California, who writes on the environment, science and parenting. You can find it on X (formerly known as Twitter) @kategammon.