  In this article we address the subject of finding the behavior of a charged
scalar field $\phi$ under the influence of external constant magnetic and
electric fields, perpendicular to each other, including also thermal effects.
For this purpose we derive an expression for the corresponding bosonic
propagator. As an application, we explore, in the weak field sector, the mass
correction for the self interacting $\lambda \phi ^4$ theory. Our results show
that the mass diminishes when the magnetic field appears, for small values of
temperature, staring to increase then when the strength of the field rises. In
the case when we have only an electric field, the mass always grow with the
field intensity. We also analyze the phase diagram associated to spontaneous
symmetry breaking of the theory finding inverse magnetic catalysis (IMC) or
inverse electric catalysis (IEC) for the cases where only a magnetic field or
only an electric field are present, respectively. In both cases, taken
separately, we have a scenario where the critical temperature associate to
symmetry restoration diminishes as function of the corresponding field
strengths. A similar situation happens when both type of fields are
simultaneously present. We have dubbed this case as inverse magnetic -electric
catalysis (IMEC). In this situation, both fields cooperate for the occurrence
of IMEC.
