A hot tea, a cozy electric blanket, a sunny afternoon. People have associated security and security with warmth since time immemorial.
The reason for this can have many origins. On the one hand, the body needs less energy in a warmer environment to maintain the average temperature of 36.6 ° C. But social aspects such as sharing body heat or sitting together by a safe fire have left formative impressions over the millennia.
Warmth has also established itself positively in linguistic usage. A warm welcome expresses the feeling of being welcome. A warm-hearted person tries to make those around him happy and content.
In terms of haptics, we speak of warm materials when we mean surfaces that remove little or no body heat from the body when touched. This is due to the material’s low thermal conductivity.
A familiar example of this would be the bathroom mat after a warm shower in winter. If you put your feet on the tiled floor, you will immediately experience ice-cold feet. The mat, on the other hand, is usually insulated by rubber layers and therefore less heat-conductive. So even though tiles and mats have the same temperature, we perceive the tiles as a frosty trap, while the mat as a cozy haven of security.
Especially natural materials like Wood , Leather or paper create this haptic feedback. This means that “warm” business cards are trusted partners that you want to hold in your hands without noticing them as a foreign body.
