People Equate ‘Cold’ With Luxury Goods, Because People Are Idiots

Look, there’s nothing great about being cold. Winter is fun for about five minutes of skiing and throwing snowballs, and then it’s time to hole up for three months next to a fire while you guzzle hot chocolate and pray for sunshine to thaw out the tiny hairs in your nose. Yet many people appear to have a very foundational association between the cold and luxury, according to new research from Musashi University and the University of Oxford published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology. The findings suggest there is a reason we refer to jewelry as “ice” or money as “cold hard cash.” We actually perceive cold objects as fancier than warm counterparts, and we consider perfume or luggage depicted in advertising with a frozen winter backdrop as more luxurious than if shown in front of a leafy spring setting. It’s not an idea that makes immediate sense, admits Rhonda Hadi, associate professor of marketing at Oxford. “Warmth [is generally] preferable to cold, and when we think about warmth, we have strong associations with warm, interpersonal relationships, and warmth in affection . . . usually that’s a pretty desirable thing!” she says. Read more at Fast Company.