Many musicians, notably John Lennon, Robert Plant, and Mud, have compared the feelings of loneliness, insecurity, or isolation with the physical feeling of coldness.

The comparisons may have been more apt than they realized, it turns out, as studies by Hans Ijzerman and Justin Saddlemyer in the Netherlands show that a person’s skin literally becomes colder when they are feeling lonely or excluded. The study involved students participating in a simulated ball-tossing game, in which certain students were purposefully excluded by the computer avatars in the game. While the students played, researches monitored their skin temperature with a thermometer accurate to hundredths of a degree Celsius.

 

Read the full article here: Getting the Cold Shoulder