The Chicago Center for Environmental and Behavioral Change to Address Psychological Impacts of Heat Exposure

The planet is currently warming at an alarming rate, leading to extreme fluctuations in temperature and increasing prevalence of heat waves, which have clear and damaging implications for human wellbeing. Tackling the problem of heat’s impacts on psychological functioning and developing appropriate solutions requires an interdisciplinary, collaborative approach across the social, biological, and physical sciences. In developing the Center for Environmental and Behavioral Change, this project seeks to address three primary questions: 1) At what temporal scales and exposure intensities do we see heat related impairments in cognition, emotional states, impulsivity, aggression, and psychopathology symptoms? 2) What individual differences lead to different outcomes across the same exposure intensity and duration? 3) How do we balance sustainable (greenspace infrastructure) and energy-intensive (air conditioning) heat-mitigation options to minimize further damage to the planet while protecting the wellbeing of its inhabitants?

“The goal of this project and the potential center is to understand how increases in temperature might lead to changes in psychological functioning such as increases in aggression, psychiatric illnesses and mental fatigue and how we might mitigate some of these heat-related changes with different interventions. Understanding the relationships between heat and psychological and brain changes will help us predict how climate change will affect behavior at large-scales and will also lead to fundamental insights into brain-environment relationships.”

Marc Berman, Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Chicago