Q&A: Rising temperatures linked to anger, violence

Key takeaways:

• Heat or climate-fueled anger often arises out of stress, fear or scarcity of resources.
• Conflict resolution, in high or low temperatures, begins with the individuals regulating their response.

Research into the relationship between rising temperatures and rates of violence in different settings has existed for decades, according to Jack Rozel, MD, MSL.

Healio spoke with Rozel, medical director at UPMC Western Psychiatric Hospital’s resolve Crisis Services and professor of psychiatry and law at the University of Pittsburgh, on how temperature and circumstance can prompt rational individuals to commit irrational acts and how to mitigate potentially disastrous interactions.

Healio: Can you discuss the impact of rising temperatures and its effect on anger and violence?

Rozel: The question that people are trying to tease out for 50 years is, why? Part of this, is there something physiological going on? Is there something about elevated heat that modifies how our brains are able to deal with certain external circumstances?

Is it something about scarcity of resources? When there’s scarcity, there’s fear. When there’s fear, we often see escalating violence. As we turn up the heat, especially with major weather-related incidents, we see this a lot.

There’s lots of ways this comes out: It comes out in fistfights; it comes out in violent crime. It comes out in traffic behavior.

There’s a great canon of research looking at Major League Baseball. There’s a lot of data that say pitchers are more likely to hit the hitter with a ball when it’s very hot out. The likelihood of a pitcher retaliating goes up when it’s hot.

And then there’s some of the larger geopolitical stuff. What does it mean at a global level, in terms of scarce resources of fresh water, food, stable utilities to have an [operational] city? Our foreign policy experts, what we’re seeing is very concerning. There’s a ton of research looking at what are the impacts of heat and of climate change on security issues and intelligence issues.

If the resources are getting scarcer, is that going to radicalize more people? And it also extends to, from a military operations perspective, how we respond to it.

Healio: It has been noted by the National Weather Service and local news that our summertime climate has shifted from a Northeastern to a mid-Atlantic climate. What are the clinical implications of this change?

Rozel: As an emergency psychiatrist, we’re interested in who’s coming to our crisis center. We have a walk-in program that gets really busy. It’s not safe to turn someone out when it’s a heat index of over 100 degrees, especially when they might be medically fragile. Lots of folks are coming in who have layers upon layers of risk factors, and that’s an issue.

Healio: Is there a correlation, causation or association with rising temperatures and the number of people you see per day or per week?

Rozel: We’re lucky that in our region, our city and our county do a really nice job rolling out cooling centers. We see an uptick because we work with a lot of folks who are unhoused. You do work with a lot of folks who have multiple comorbid medical and psychiatric issues. We have to be really sure of exactly where they’re going next.

Healio: Is there a body of literature that specifically deals with heat-related violence, trauma, that’s different from regular conflict resolution?

Rozel: Not that I’ve seen. But [the subject] might fall into a couple different categories: Is this an issue around tempers getting higher because people are hot, sweaty and miserable? Is there a larger societal issue of access to critical resources? Is this someone feeling increasingly motivated toward an extremist ideology because of discussions about climate change and whether they believe in science and whether or not they feel it’s their role to do something in one direction? It might involve different types of interventions.

Healio: What would you suggest to keep a cool head and to diffuse situations that may get out of hand this time of year at home and in public?

Rozel: It begins with us. There’s this book back from the 1970s, by Samuel Shem called “The House of God.” It did not age well, but it has this great line: “The first pulse to take in a code is your own.” The impact of our own emotions, our lapse in judgment, could have catastrophic outcomes.

As easy as it sounds, a grounding breath. It works really well as a quick way to reregulate our autonomics; it gives us an opportunity to pause and reassess. But also, to take that moment to filter: Is this person agitated and threatening or am I misinterpreting because of whatever my lens [of perception] is? This is something we teach to law enforcement and special operators in tactical situations.

The second part of it is a little grace and compassion. Recognizing at a cognitive level that the reason someone might be pissed off and yelling at me — while it may feel intensely personal — might not be personal in any way, shape or form.

In the world of violence, it’s very rarely just one thing. It’s heat, on top of a housing issue, on top of if they’ve been waiting in the [ED] for 12 hours and now the heat on top of those, it might just be that breaking point. People don’t generally come to me on their best days.

Healio: Is there anything else you’d like to share?

Rozel: There is one outlier study I’ve found about temperature and violence. At the very least it looks in a different direction. It’s about extreme cold temperatures. What this study found, looking at weather and more seasonal trends, is that violence is higher in winter and spring months, but lower in the autumn months.

It’s also worth noting this was not a study in the United States; this was a study in the Russian Federation.

For more information:

Jack Rozel, MD, MSL, is medical director at UPMC Western Psychiatric Hospital’s resolve Crisis Services and professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh. He can be reached at rozeljs@upmc.edu; X (Twitter): @ViolenceWonks.