When the phone calls started to come, Craig Anderson, professor and chair of the psychology department, thought they were about his video game research. Last spring, Anderson was in the media spotlight when his research on violent video games landed him in front of a U.S. Senate committee. The subsequent publicity resulted in media outlets from around the world contacting him. This time the calls weren't on the study that said individuals who play violent video games were more aggressive than those that didn't.
Aggression however does play a role in the psychology professor's latest research.
That article caught the attention of Reuters news service and soon Anderson's phone was ringing off the hook. The article says that hot temperatures can increase aggressive motives and behaviors in individuals. This conclusion is based on numerous studies conducted in both field and laboratory settings. Even when we statistically control for population and social and economic factors like poverty and unemployment rates, hotter cities will still have higher violent crime rates than cool cities. Data in these field studies consistently show that violent crime rates are higher in hotter regions than in other regions of the United States.