People Walk at a Quicker Pace in Warm Areas : Hot? Your Feet Move Faster, Study Finds

Contrary to popular belief, people tend to walk more quickly in warm temperatures than they do in cool temperatures, according to a researcher who surreptitiously timed pedestrians in the North Miami area.

Three informal studies found that shoppers stepped up their pace when temperatures were in the 80s, but walked more slowly when temperatures were in the 70s, environmental psychologist James Rotton said Friday during the American Psychological Assn.’s annual meeting.

Rotton did not examine walking speeds in even hotter weather, but the Florida International University researcher said: “I suspect that once you start getting above 90 or 100 (degrees), people are going to start slowing down.”

Previous studies have found that people tend to walk more quickly in larger cities than in smaller ones, in crowded areas than in uncrowded settings and in noisy than in quiet places, Rotton said.

Use Stopwatches

In his first study, Rotton and his students used stopwatches to surreptitiously time how long it took 32 randomly selected, male pedestrians to walk 50 feet in a 75-degree shopping mall and on a sidewalk outside, where the temperature was 83 degrees.

The men in the shopping mall traversed the 50-foot course, which was marked with tape, in an average of 12.3 seconds, while the men in the warmer outside setting took an average of 9.9 seconds.

Two other studies addressed the question of whether the warmer air actually invigorated people to make them walk more quickly, or if they simply were walking fast to get to their air-conditioned cars. Rotton found that both factors apparently played a role.

In one of the experiments, a single observer timed 40 male and 40 female pedestrians as they walked in a 78-degree indoor shopping mall and an 83-degree outdoor shopping center with a nearly identical number of stores. Even when the results were corrected for differences in crowding, both sexes walked significantly faster in the warmer setting, suggesting that warmer air energizes people, Rotton said.

Three Settings

In another study, 30 men and 30 women were timed in three settings: a 75-degree indoor mall, the 81-degree route from the mall’s door to the parking lot, and an 85-degree outdoor shopping center. As before, people in the warmer, outdoor shopping center walked faster than those in the mall. But people heading for their cars walked most quickly.

“This pattern of findings suggests that heat is not only energizing, it is also an aversive stimulus that individuals try to avoid,” Rotton said.