A room air conditioner is operable to perform heating or cooling operations in a room. Furthermore, it is possible to direct warm or cool air to selected regions of the room. For example, it is possible to carry out a distant mode of operation wherein warm or cool air is supplied to a distant region of the room, or a wide mode wherein the warm or cool air is directed across the entire width of the room. When either the distant mode or the wide mode is selected, a control mechanism of the air conditioner automatically resets the set temperature by either raising or lowering a fixed reference temperature (pre-programmed into the air conditioner controller). If a heating operation has been selected, the reference temperature is automatically increased by a predetermined amount, and during a cooling operation, the reference temperature is automatically reduced by a predetermined amount.