Childhood Habits May Shape Adult Thermostat Settings

Childhood routines are often difficult to shake off. Findings from a new survey indicate that the way people set their thermostat as adults may reflect the environment in which they were raised.

A recent paper, playfully titled "Turn down for watt", argues that the average American is not especially inclined to lower their thermostat, despite heating and cooling making up a substantial share of household energy costs.

Rather than changing those routines, many residents appear to mirror the practices of their parents.

"Specifically, individuals who grew up in warmer homes tend to maintain higher thermostat settings in their current homes, suggesting a lasting influence of early thermal environments on current temperature preferences," write organizational behavior researcher Dritjon Gruda from Maynooth University in Ireland, and Paul Hanges, an organizational psychologist from the University of Maryland in the US.

Household energy use and thermostat habits

Residential energy use currently represents 21 percent of total energy consumption in the US, with domestic heating and cooling accounting for more than half of that amount.

Although half of US homes are unoccupied during the day, many households still leave their heating or air conditioning running while nobody is there. According to some surveys, just 42 percent of American homeowners alter their thermostat settings to reduce energy use and costs.

These patterns raise household bills as well as wasting energy, and the new survey indicates that temperature preferences may take root during childhood.

"Understanding what motivates consumer heating and cooling choice is an important avenue for potentially reducing the burning of fossil fuels," write Gruda and Hanges.

The researchers surveyed 2,128 people from throughout the United States. Participants reported the average winter thermostat settings in their adult homes and in the homes where they lived as children. They also rated how emotionally connected they felt to their community.

Childhood homes shape adult thermostat settings

Participants living in colder winter regions who had grown up in warmer homes – maintained at 26.67 degrees Celsius (80 degrees Fahrenheit) – preferred warmer settings in their adult homes than people raised in colder childhood homes – maintained at 21.11 degrees Celsius (70 degrees Fahrenheit).

The pattern remained even after the researchers accounted for race, education, household income and geographic mobility.

While childhood habits can be "deeply entrenched and difficult to change", Gruda and Hanges note, that does not mean they cannot be broken.

Community belonging and heating choices

How strongly a participant identified with, or felt connected to, their community was found to "strongly" affect the link between their current thermostat use and their upbringing.

For example, people who relocated to colder winter regions, such as New York, and who felt strongly connected to their local community generally kept a lower thermostat setting than participants who felt less at home in their community.

As might be expected, people in warmer places such as Florida typically rely less on central heating and use air conditioning to cool their homes, including during winter. Yet, once again, a person's sense of belonging within their community can partly disrupt this tendency.

"Individuals who indicated high community fit reported higher home temperatures, due to likely more limited air conditioning," the psychologists note.

This points to peers as potential influences on energy use. However, because the researchers did not directly measure community norms, they stress that the findings should be treated cautiously.

The results also rely on self-reported information, which cannot confirm that participants accurately reported their thermostat settings in either adulthood or childhood.

Furthermore, a thermostat setting does not necessarily reflect the actual temperature inside a home. This can be particularly hard to regulate in older properties with poorer insulation.

Gruda and Hanges argue that future research should address these limitations and examine the cultural factors affecting how people heat and cool their homes.

"Without understanding the underlying psychological mechanisms and drivers of behavior," the psychologists write, we will fail to explain "why rational consumers do not necessarily strive to optimize their energy consumption."

The study was published in PLOS Climate.