ABSTRACT
Current approaches on cognition hold that concrete concepts are grounded in concrete experiences. There is no consensus, however, as to whether this is equally true for abstract concepts. In this review we discuss how the body might be involved in understanding abstract concepts through metaphor activation. Substantial research has been conducted on the activation of common orientational metaphors with bodily manipulations, such as "power is up" and "more is up" representations. We will focus on the political metaphor that has a more complex association between the concept and the concrete domain. However, the outcomes of studies on this political metaphor have not always been consistent, possibly because the experimental manipulation was not implicit enough. The inclusion of new technological devices in this area of research, such as the Wii Balance Board, seems promising in order to assess the groundedness of abstract conceptual spatial metaphors in an implicit manner. This may aid further research to effectively demonstrate the interrelatedness between the body and more abstract representations.
ABSTRACT
Embodied cognition research has shown how actions or body positions may affect cognitive processes, such as autobiographical memory retrieval or judgments. The present study examined the role of body balance (to the left or the right) in participants on their attributions to political parties. Participants thought they stood upright on a Wii(™) Balance Board, while they were actually slightly tilted to the left or the right. Participants then ascribed fairly general political statements to one of 10 political parties that are represented in the Dutch House of Representatives. Results showed a significant interaction of congruent leaning direction with left- or right-wing party attribution. When the same analyses were performed with the political parties being divided into affiliations to the right, center, and left based on participants' personal opinions rather than a ruling classification, no effects were found. The study provides evidence that conceptual metaphors are activated by manipulating body balance implicitly. Moreover, people's judgments may be colored by seemingly trivial circumstances such as standing slightly out of balance.
ABSTRACT
Recent evidence suggests that decision makers in criminal procedures are susceptible to biases. We previously found support for the presence of a feature positive effect (FPE, i.e., people attach more meaning to present than to absent information) in legal-decision making. In this study, we tried to uncover the mechanisms behind the FPE. Taking a cue from the literature on situation models in language comprehension, we investigated whether a FPE manifests itself in the memorization and use of forensic evidence. Students read a case file about a fistfight as well as additional evidence. The forensic evidence was manipulated such that a FPE on guilt estimation and conviction rate could be assessed. While subjects read additional forensic evidence, their eye movements were recorded to explore the presence of FPE in online processing. Afterwards, subjects were asked to decide on the suspect's guilt. They had to recall all information they remembered from the case file and indicate which parts of information they considered relevant to this decision. The results provided evidence for the occurrence of FPE in memorization and use of information and can be explained by the theoretical construct of situation models.
