Is “warmth” a personal quality typically associated with effective lawyering? More so than we’ve been led to believe, according to some. Kristin Gerdy Kyle at Brigham Young University School of Law has effectively asserted that “once the lawyer steps into the room with the client, her understanding, empathy, and compassion (which are often expressly manifest in her ability to actually listen to the client) become equally important,” and that “caring actually makes analysis stronger.”
A late-night discussion among lawyers with more spare time than good sense once drifted into a discussion of what band or album names might best reflect the true spirit of contemporary practice. Speaking of warmth, we were soon reminded that there’s nothing new under the sun since our two seemingly best candidates, “Force Majeure” and “In Terrorem,” were already taken. Our disappointment was rivaled by our own earlier experience of being convinced that “The Temptations” would be a novel handle for a reggae soul outfit, only to learn that this was well-trodden ground.
Warmth is a concept that handily reflects the guidance proffered by the “National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being” (the “Task Force”), an entity “conceptualized and initiated by the ABA Commission on Lawyer Assistance Programs (CoLAP), the National Organization of Bar Counsel (NOBC), and the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers (APRL)” and made up of several other “participating entities” from within and without the American Bar Association.
The Task Force has identified six pillars or “dimensions” that combine to “make up full well-being for lawyers,” one of which is the “Physical” dimension, expressed in part by “striving for regular physical activity, proper diet and nutrition, and rejuvenation,” with a supplemental emphasis on “minimizing the use of addictive substances” and “seeking help for physical health when needed.”
The physical benefits of warmth are now accepted by social and other scientists as contributing manifestly to psychological manifestations of warmth. According to Drs. Lawrence Williams at the University of Colorado and John Bargh at Yale University (both Boulder and New Haven, incidentally, have the same low average annual temperature of 52 degrees) “hypothesized that experiences of physical warmth (or coldness) would increase feelings of interpersonal warmth (or coldness), without the person's awareness of this influence,” and found in the course of multiple studies that, for example, “participants who briefly held a cup of hot (versus iced) coffee judged a target person as having a “warmer” personality,” while “participants holding a hot (versus cold) therapeutic pad were more likely to choose a gift for a friend instead of for themselves.”
If warmth is a gift that keeps on giving, that gift can sometimes amount to too much of a good thing when temperatures keep rising. Concerning physical and interrelated psychological concerns alike, the United States Department of Health and Human Services—these days, government agencies know everything there is to know about taking the heat—has identified the following concerns:
An increased risk of hospitalization for heart disease;
Heat exhaustion, which can lead to heat stroke if not treated, can cause critical illness, brain injury, and even death;
Worsening asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) as heat increases the production of ground-level ozone;
Dehydration, which can lead to kidney injury and blood pressure problems. Some kidney damage can become irreversible with repeated or untreated injury; and
Mental health and substance use risks, including loss of sleep and slowing of brain cognition, and heightened risk of increased acute psychiatric and substance use symptoms among people with chronic behavioral health conditions.
More strictly on the behavioral side of the equation, seasoned criminal practitioners are well aware of why prisons and other detention facilities with adequate resources literally try to keep things as cool as possible. Cesar Hernandez of the Prison Journalism Project recently described how, when exposed to excessive heat, “workers do less, dropping the ball on delivering ice or folding laundry. That tests everyone’s patience.” He also quoted a fellow inmate as observing that “sometimes physical fights do occur. For every one fight, there are ten almost-fights.”
Newspaper reporter and experimental psychologist Dana Smith described additional studies in which unrelenting heat “led to a 10 percent average drop in performance across tests of memory, reaction time and executive functioning,” in which it was established that “there are more murders, assaults and episodes of domestic violence on hot days,” and in which “people acted more spitefully toward others while playing a specially designed video game in a hot room than in a cool one.”
Interpersonal warmth that arises free of the unwelcome influence of an untended thermostat will contribute to the psychological wellness of all involved. The website of the Midwest Alliance for Mindfulness—where better? Notes on the warmth that
To be considered warm by others, there must be a perception of genuine friendliness, affection, helpfulness, and trustworthiness. Research indicates the behavioral cues most closely related to warmth ratings were frequency of smiling and number of positive statements about other people. The degree of another’s perceived warmth or coolness helps us decide whether they may be a potential friend and suggests to us what their intentions might be;
Interpersonal warmth is now recognized as one of the two main factors in our automatic appraisals of others. Together with competence, it accounts for about 82% of the variance in people’s evaluations of social behaviors. Research indicates that an appraisal of warmth underlies every group stereotype studied across dozens of countries. Not only is it a transformative trait for individuals, but it also contributes to our perceptions of groups and whole societies; and
There are many benefits to being a warm person, while its opposite has been correlated in the research with lower relationship quality, personality disorders, aggression, criminality, and lack of social support. Greater warmth tends to be associated with closer, more intimate friendships. It has also been conceptualized as an important trait in effective leadership.
Particularly given the season, and for all of the right reasons, let’s do our best to stay warm.
[Reprinted with permission of the Kentucky Bar Association]
