I live in two different worlds. The outside is too hot to bear and my office desk, too cold to survive. My office backpack consists of a woolen jacket, pair of socks, and a shawl (just in case). During office hours, I keep a cup of hot water to prevent my fingers from frostbite. From time to time, I find myself fighting with my colleagues to turn up the thermostat as I am always shivering at my desk regardless of the weather outside. Every season has become a winter for me! One day, I asked myself, am I the only one who is suffering from the wrath of AC? Turns out, I’m not alone!

In search of some hard evidence to turn up the heat in the office, I stumbled up a study that proves that the chilly atmosphere in offices may lower the productivity of women. According to a recently published study, women tend to perform better in math and verbal tasks at higher temperatures. What’s more, the rise in female performance in response to higher temperature is remarkably larger than men. Thus, lowering temperature of the office does not only increase the electricity bill for the company but also costs the productivity of all the female workers. The study included more than 500 college students in Berlin who answered tests in colder and warmer temperatures. It was observed that the female students answered more questions in a warmer atmosphere. Whereas, the test results did not show much difference with the male students as if they were immune to changes in temperature.

There was another research that studied whether the lower temperatures heighten tempers or not. A study published in 2013 in the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence observed more than 38.1 million tweets in the U.S. during the month of April. The researchers used a linguistics coding system to find out whether negative and positive emotions are linked with temperature. They observed that in Southern states, including Alabama and Georgia, where there is higher humidity index, people tend to tweet with more negative emotions. On the other hand, in regions such as Arizona, people share their opinion with more positive language.

Thus, scientists suggest if the workplace is gender mixed, you better set the temperature between 70–73°F as that could be the reason for lower productivity or bad temper of your female coworkers.