The UK briefly became a Soviet state last Friday night when governmental ‘hot weather’ alerts hit everyone’s phones repeatedly.
As temperatures hit 30C and higher, emergency lines were flooded by Brits who had been urged to report any active fires by the alerts.
Unfortunately – as beleaguered fire service operators would find out – the calls weren’t about forest fires, but about people’s neighbours enjoying a BBQ next door.
Such was the degree to which we were bombarding 999, fire services had to intervene to stop their logs getting jammed. In a statement on X, Surrey Fire & Rescue service said: “Please only call 999 if there is an emergency or a fire producing significant smoke.
“We understand residents may be concerned, but we are unable to respond to reports of neighbours having BBQs, bonfires or campfires in their gardens unless there is an emergency.”
So – why did we Brits rush to the phones to dob our neighbours in, the moment we got the call out from the government?
Experts think it’s two-fold… firstly – in the boiling weather we all become aggy little rats. “As temperature goes up, so does cortisol, and cortisol is the hormone that keeps the body tuned-up for the possibility of danger,” human behaviour psychologist Dr. Eleni Nicolaou told Daily Star.
She added: “Studies have long associated increases in temperature with increases in irritability and aggression. Mukherjee and Sanders (2021) report in a NBER study that the probability of violence between prison inmates increases by 18% on the hottest days.
“I had a client complain last summer about the noise from her neighbour’s music being louder than usual, although he didn’t turn it up during the hottest week of the year.
“The nervous system has no way of knowing if the sensation is benign or dangerous, as both send the same signals. Therefore, a non-threatening BBQ can be perceived as dangerous rather than simply an annoyance.”
Secondly – telling on our neighbours triggers a calming response, and makes us feel like we’re “in control”, says Nicolaou.
|Reporting someone provides a stressed brain with some control, as action, even as simple as a call, halts the helpless feeling that stress generates,” she said. “Reporting can be a substitute for a face-to-face conversation, since there is no risk of a bad relationship or confrontation with a neighbour when reporting by phone.”