Years ago I was in a garment factory in southern China. I made a note as I was being shown around about how enlightened the factory owner was having air-conditioning installed to keep staff comfortable.
Later in the formal Q+A I brought up the issue and asked how they justified the extra expense? If we don’t temperature control, I was told, productivity drops by between 10%~20%. No benevolence at work; the cooler working conditions were a practical dollars and sense productivity enhancer.
The paper highlighted this week takes a more formal approach to how temperature can affect cognitive performance, in this case how students test in different temperature settings. The researchers use data collected from China’s annual National College Entrance Exam, a nationwide test that takes place every year and involves around 9-million students.
Joshua Graff Zevin from the University of California et al digress before results to highlight just how important this exam is for students. For the 12% lucky enough to make it to a top Chinese university the lifetime salary premium is around 40%.
Needless to say, temperature is a factor. A 1-standard deviation change in temperature or difference of 3.29-degrees (Celsius) leads to a 1.12% lower test score, and that will decrease a test-taker’s chance of getting into a top university by nearly 2%.
There’s no swerving the problem as students are required to test-take in their home-towns so there’s no jockeying the system by asking to sit the test in Kunming or Harbin. Moreover test sites are specifically prohibited from using air-conditioning which, the researchers point out, could significantly level the geographic playing field.
The implications are obvious and there are some very easy fixes the paper suggests. The easiest of all would be to simply move the test to a cooler part of the year.
You can access the paper in full via the following link Temperature and Performance
Happy Sunday.