Embodied Cognition

Question 1

Are metaphors real?

Answer 1

• Zhong & Leonardelli, 2008: People feel cold (experiment 1) or prefer warm foods/drinks (experiment 2) when either recall a past episode of exclusion or are excluded in an online game
• People’s social and physical experiences are associated and metaphors are based on this co-occurrence.
• People use metaphors not only as linguistic elements but also as a way to experience and make sense of the world.
• Metaphors have often been used to identify ‘embodied processes’.

Question 2

Symbolic models

Answer 2

• Idea in the ’70s and ’80s that relied on the idea that mental representations are conceptual, and that cognition and perception (i.e. what you can see, sense, feel) are separated.
• High-level cognition (e.g., categorization, memory) operates on (abstract) symbols that are arbitrarily linked to our perceptual experiences.
• Smith, 1996

Question 3

Embodied cognition

Answer 3

• Accounts of grounded cognitions reject the traditional views that knowledge is represented in terms of (abstract) symbols in memory.
• They assume that cognition (conceptual representations) and perception (sensorimotor representations) are linked.
• Cognition is situated and for action: “Cognition is inherently perceptual”. Instead of abstract symbols the brain contains perceptual symbols (Barsalou, 1999) e.g. social isolation → cold.
• Mind – Body Link: the “working model” of embodiment assumes a link between “abstract”, conceptual representations and sensorimotor representations (Schubert & Semin, 2009).

Question 4

Metaphors and embodiment

Answer 4

• Metaphors have often been used to identify “embodied processes”.
• Metaphors can originate from a correlation between experiences during childhood e.g. children are exposed to the association between affection and warmth by being held by their caregivers and thus learn the metaphor “Affection is Warmth” (Casasanto, 2014).
• Concepts can be organised as spatial metaphors e.g. power → up, morality → straightness

Question 5

Wells and Petty (1980)

Answer 5

More favourable attitudes toward the content of a message after nodding vs. shaking the head → Association between bodily posture and motor behaviours with positive and negative attitudes

Question 6

Behavioural priming

Answer 6

• Bargh et al. (1996) study showed that participants’ walking speed could be primed by exposing them to words associated with the elderly
• The mental representation of the elderly stereotype includes sensory-motor representations → example of embodiment.
• Replication study recently found this study was flawed in that it was linked to experimenter bias

Question 7

Schubert (2005)

Answer 7

• Embodiment and spatial metaphors
• Experiment with reaction time task where participants had to find a word (winner/loser) and click up and down arrows depending on the question
• Findings showed thay the reaction time was influenced by the location of the word (winner/loser at top/bottom), whereby winner was associated with being at the top and loser at the bottom

Question 8

Pacilli et al. (2018)

Answer 8

• Embodied cognition and spatial metaphors
• ​Participants recall and write about two episodes where they felt immoral/moral and then choose the picture they prefer the most: one curved picture and one straight
• Results showed that the preference for the straight picture was significantly stronger in the moral condition than immoral → link between morality and straightness

Question 9

Trajectory of embodiment research

Answer 9

Four areas in which research could develop the theories and their applications (Meier et al., 2012)

1. Start from a behaviour rather than a metaphor.
2. Test the boundary conditions and the mediators.
3. Consider outcomes linked to actions.
4. Test individual differences (e.g., personality).

Question 10

Foroni and Semin, 2009

Answer 10

• Role of embodiment in emotion language
• Found that reading action words for positive emotional expressions (e.g., smile) activated smile muscles more than reading adjectives that were simply positive in nature (e.g., funny) ⇒ emotion language is not symbolic but embodied.
• Exposure to action words for positive (e.g., smile) vs negative (e.g., frown) emotion expressions caused people to rate cartoons as funnier, but not when participants held a pen between their lips, which inhibited the activation of facial muscles ⇒ reveals that positive evaluations are partially based upon the bodily actions (activation of smile muscles) involved in happy experiences, and blocking these actions reduces positive evaluations.
• Thus, Foroni and Semin (2009) showed a boundary condition that is theoretically consistent with the embodiment of emotion language.

Question 11

Individual differences in embodied cognition

Answer 11

• Personality-related: “Moral Stroop effect” → stronger association between morality and white and between immorality and black in individuals who like cleaning products (Sherman & Clore, 2009).
• Not only differences related to personality, but possibly to the variability in physical abilities:
  
  • health (e.g., representations following an injury)
  • age (e.g., representations of the social environment in the elderly)