Handbook of Embodied Psychology

time, reflecting embodied as well as linguistic and social influences. In this chapter, we focus on concepts from the domain of social cognition and emotion while detailing ways in which (and circumstances under which) they link to sensorimotor and interoceptive systems.

 

Chapter 3: The Feelings-as-Information Perspective on Embodiment

Contact Author: Gerald L. Clore (gc4q@virginia.edu), University of Virginia, USA

 

We focus on emotions and feeling, the embodied nature of which reflects more than their bodily concomitants. We explore several themes including that: (1) Feelings are difficult to describe in words. But feelings can be characterized (and partially elicited) by choosing words with the right connotations. As seen in literature, song, poetry, and drama, the connotative meanings of words allow hearers and readers to feel as well as to understand. (2) The feelings-as-information approach (Clore, Schiller, & Shaked, 2018), augmented with cognitive priming processes, illuminate the confusing and sometimes controversial findings concerning embodied metaphors. We examine evidence concerning whether such phenomena involve metaphor or merely associative relationships. We also address questions about the conditions under which the effects are reversible. (3) Finally, we step back and view embodied psychology from a resource perspective. We draw on behavioral ecology and the embodied perception work of Proffitt (2006) to ask how the needs for social and physical resources guide human behavior.

 

Chapter 4: Interoceptive Approaches to Embodiment

Contact Author: André Schulz (andre.schulz@uni.lu), University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg

Other Authors (If Known): Claus Vögele

 

Interoception is defined as a mechanism to process and perceive internal bodily signals. Influential theories concerning such processes, such as the multi-faceted model by Garfinkel et al., the process model by Vaitl and the predictive coding model, are addressed. This includes a definition of the most common interoceptive terms - i.e., interoceptive accuracy, sensibility, sensitivity, awareness, and prediction error. We then present examples for interoceptive tasks and paradigms to assess different elements of interoceptive theories. Typical interoceptive indicators include self-reports, behavioral measures, and neurophysiological indices. Finally, we discuss existing evidence that these interoceptive indicators are related to emotional experience and emotion regulation, consciousness, and decision-making. These findings illustrate the relevance of interoceptive indicators for embodiment. 



Chapter 5: The Metaphorical Body

Contact Author: Raymond W. Gibbs Jr. (raymondgibbs@gmail.com), Cognitive Scientist and Former Distinguished Professor, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA

 

Bodily experience serves as a source domain to better understand less structured, and typically more abstract, target domains (e.g., LIFE IS A JOURNEY, in which bodily experiences associated with journeys are mapped to better structure our understanding of life). This work on "embodied conceptual metaphor" is a key part of the embodied revolution in the cognitive sciences. The present chapter, however, explores the possibility that many source domains arising from bodily experience may themselves be inherently metaphorical. I will present a variety of examples from cognitive linguistics, psychology, and medical anthropology to show how varied bodily experiences are likely understood in symbolic and metaphorical terms. Following this, I discuss some of the methodological challenges associated with further empirical study of the "metaphorical body" and evaluate several possible skeptical responses to the claim that bodily experience is inherently metaphorical. Finally, I outline several theoretical implications of this metaphorical body hypothesis for our understanding of embodiment, cognition, and metaphorical experience in several real-world contexts.

 

Chapter 6: The Extended Mind Thesis and Its ApplicationsContact Author: Mirko Farino (farinamirko@gmail.com), King's College, London, United Kingdom



Other Authors (If Known): Sergei Levin

 

Proponents of the extended mind story hold that even quite familiar human mental states (such as states of believing) can be realized, in part, by structures and processes located outside the human head. Such claims paint the mind (or better, the physical machinery that realizes some of our cognitive processes and mental states) as, under humanly attainable conditions, extending beyond the bounds of skin and skull. In recent years, a fruitful debate about the validity and scope of the Extended Mind Thesis (EMT) has emerged both within the empirical sciences (e.g., psychology and neuroscience) and in the philosophy of mind. The goal of this chapter is to investigate the prospects of empirical support for EMT by clarifying to which extent researchers in psychology and neuroscience already implicitly assume extended cognition ideas or even actively operate with them. In this chapter, I thus review work in 'traditional fields' (such as memory, perception and action, language and thought, consciousness and agency) that attests to the power of research on extended cognition but also investigate three major recent developments (internet, social cognition, and music) that promise to highlight points of progress that are not easily revealed by the kind of cases that animate the majority of philosophical discussions in this area. I suggest that these latter developments can help move the field forward in important and unexpected ways and conclude by arguing that it is a mere prejudice to suppose that all cognition must take place within the confines of the organism's skin and skull.

 

Section 2: Cognitive and Neuroscience Perspectives

 

Many of the key developments in embodiment have occurred within cognitive psychology and within the allied area of cognitive neuroscience (Barsalou, 2008; Glenberg, Witt, & Metcalfe, 2013). Accordingly, cognitive and neuroscience perspectives will figure prominently in the second section of the present volume. In addition, the section tackles key questions concerning how it is that human beings can use their bodily experiences to ground abstract concepts, the role of bodily experiences in evaluations of the environment, and the manner in which intentions, goals, and tasks become coordinated with what we see and do as bodily beings.

 

Chapter 7: Measuring the Mathematical Mind: Embodied Evidence from Negative Numbers, Calculation Biases, Motor Resonance, and Emotional Priming

Contact Author: Martin A. Fischer (martinf@uni-potsdam.de), University of Potsdam, GermanyOther Authors (If Known): A. Felisatti, E. Kulkova, M. Mende, and A. Miklashevsky



 

The embodied perspective on human cognition opposes the view of the human mind as a computer. It is thus particularly diagnostic to assess how the body contributes to numerical cognition. We review how associations between numbers and space influence many tasks and even negative number comprehension. Grounded, embodied and situated learning experiences impose systematic heuristics and biases on mental arithmetic and engage our motor system during number processing. Finally, we document how emotional processing interacts with simple calculations, thus supporting an embodied understanding of the mathematical mind.

 

Chapter 8: The Challenge of Abstract Concepts

Contact Author: Guy Dove (guy.dove@louisville.edu), University of Louisville, USA

 

In this chapter, I will argue that abstract concepts are heterogeneous and pose several distinct challenges for embodied cognition. I will survey evidence supporting this heterogeneity and critically review possible theoretical means of addressing these challenges.

 

Chapter 9: Abstract Concepts and Social Metacognition: Sociality from the Inside?

Contact Author: Anna M. Borghi (anna.borghi@gmail.com), Sapienza University of Rome, Italy

Other Authors (If Known): Chiara Fini and Luca Tummolini 



We have recently proposed that metacognition - the set of capacities through which an operating subsystem is evaluated and represented by another subsystem - is an important process that can ground the meaning of concepts, and that this is particularly important for abstract concepts (see, for instance, mental state concepts). In addition, metacognition can be applied to concept use itself. In this connection, metacognition can provide awareness of the inadequacies of our knowledge of abstract concepts, and motivate the need to rely on others to ask information and complement our knowledge. In this chapter, we intend to better detail why abstract concepts elicit metacognition in general and social metacognition in specific.

 

Chapter 10: Auditory Embodied Cognition of Emotion

Contact Author: Michael McBeath (Michael.McBeath@asu.edu), Arizona State University, USA

Other Authors (If Known): Christine Yu and Arthur Glenberg

 

Research findings have established a relationship between emotions and the musculature that controls facial expressions, confirming that this relationship appears to be relatively universal in humans. An extensive literature confirms cross-cultural visual recognition of specific emotions from prototypical facial expressions. The current chapter describes parallel findings in the domain of audition, specifically the generic perception of emotion associated with specific acoustic characteristics such as consonance-dissonance and phonemic timbre qualities. The pattern of findings indicates that musculature constraints, like the ones that produce recognizable visible facial expressions during specific emotions, likely also favor production of recognizable auditory vocalization patterns during emotions. The general results are consistent with the idea of the multisensory embodied cognition of emotion.

 

Chapter 11: Location, Timing, and Magnitude of Embodied Language Processing

Contact Author: Claudia Gianelli (isotopia@gmail.com), Scuola Universitaria Superiore IUSS, Italy

Other Authors (If Known): Katharina Kühne

 

This chapter will examine language processing from an embodied perspective. We will compare evidence from M/EEG, fMRI, and stimulation studies, with a particular focus on the advantages and disadvantages of each method. We will also emphasize the point that cumulative progress will depend on the integration of findings across the different methodologies.

 

Chapter 12: Differential Influences of Multisensory Integration and Attention in Embodied Perception

Contact Author: Catherine L. Reed (Cathy.Reed@ClaremontMcKenna.edu), Claremont McKenna College, USA

Other Authors (If Known): Alan A. Hartley

 The body plays a role in directing our perceptual, attentional, and cognitive systems. Our neural systems are designed to coordinate our bodies with inputs from the outside world to facilitate our actions. However, successful interactions with the world require not only that our perceptual systems be predisposed to respond to likely events (e.g., grasping a cup near our hand) but also that actions are mediated by our current goals (e.g., to satisfy thirst) to efficiently select and execute the most appropriate response. In this chapter, we review behavioral and neurophysiological data on the hand proximity effect (i.e., objects near the hand alter perceptual processing) and discuss how integration of information from multiple senses together with task-related attention can influence upcoming actions.



 

Chapter 13: Bodily Relativity: How our Bodies Shape our Brains and Minds

Contact Author: Daniel Casasanto (casasanto@cornell.com), Cornell University, USA

 

Do people with different kinds of bodies think differently? According to the body-specificity hypothesis, they should. In this chapter, I review evidence that right- and left-handers, who perform actions in systematically different ways, use correspondingly different areas of the brain for imagining actions and representing the meanings of action verbs. Beyond concrete actions, the way people use their hands also influences the way they represent abstract ideas with positive and negative emotional valence like "goodness," "honesty," and "intelligence," and how they communicate about them in spontaneous speech and gesture. Changing how people use their right and left hands can cause them to think differently, suggesting that motoric differences between right- and left-handers are not merely correlated with cognitive differences. Body-specific patterns of motor experience shape the way we think, feel, communicate, and make decisions, and also determine how thoughts and feelings are organized in our brains. Together, these findings support the emerging theory of bodily relativity.

 

Chapter 14: Embodied Perception and Action in Real and Virtual EnvironmentsContact Author: Jeanine K. Stefanucci (Jeanine.stefanucci@psych.utah.edu), University of Utah, USA



Other Authors (If Known): Morgan Saxon and Mirinda Whitaker

 

In this chapter, we argue that the body is an essential factor in how people scale their perceptions of and actions in both real and virtual environments. We will first review work showing that the size and posture of the body can influence perception and decisions about action in the real world. For example, the perception of whether apertures can be walked through scales to the current position of the body. We will then show that conveying a different visual body size to observers using virtual reality can lead to changes in the perception of scale in virtual environments. For example, observers may rescale their perceptions of what they believe they can step over when embodying a different sized foot in virtual reality. Finally, states of the body such as emotions may also play a role in perceptions of certain aspects of the scale of real and virtual environments. Overall, we argue that embodiment contributes to perceptual and action processes to allow us to scale the world according to our body's current action capabilities.

 

Section 3: Social and Personality Perspectives

 

Like cognitive psychology, social psychology has been responsible for some of the key evidence supporting bodily perspectives on thinking, feeling, and acting (Glenberg, 2010; Niedenthal et al., 2005). Because this is true, we recruited embodiment experts within social-personality psychology for the third major section of the book. Authors will detail the ways in which embodied influences seem to affect social cognition, relationship dynamics, personality traits, and clinical symptoms. Additionally, chapters will call for new ways of thinking about such dynamics, both within and across cultures.

 

Chapter 15: Embodiment of Social Relations in Thinking and Communicating is Determined by Conformation Systems

Contact Author: Thomas W. Schubert (thomas.wolfgang.schubert@gmail.com), University of Oslo, Norway

Other Authors (If Known): Alan P. Fiske

 

Work on the embodiment of social relations has amassed a large body of empirical evidence over the past twenty years. However, we argue that it has suffered from interrelated shortcomings: Its theoretical foundations are largely eclectic; its conceptualization of social relations has been underdeveloped; and recent replication failures have raised questions and concerns. For a grounding of the literature, we review and update Conformation Theory (Fiske, 2004) and show how it permits integrated theorizing on evolutionary, cultural, social, and cognitive processes. We illustrate how the embodiment of authority and communal relations can be described using this approach, using evidence ranging from nonverbal behavior to schematized cues. We also discuss how work on another form of social relations - equality matching - could follow the same blueprint in the future.

 

Chapter 16: Social Relational Embodiment in Times of the Replication Crisis

Contact Author: Hans IJzerman (h.ijzerman@gmail.com), Universite Grenoble Alpes, France

 

Theories of embodied influence within social relationships often emphasize feedback-related or metaphorical influences. In addition to such cognitive factors, social relationships may also be embodied in a different way - we gravitate toward others in part because others can provide sources of bodily heat that are useful in maintaining core body temperature. The present chapter describes social thermoregulation theory, considers social relational embodiment in broader terms, and makes the case for methodological rigor in this area of enquiry.

 

Chapter 17: Social Cognition, the 4Es, and the 4As (Affect, Affordance, Agency, and Autonomy)

Contact Author: Shaun Gallagher (s.gallagher@memphis.edu), University of Memphis, USA

 

Embodied cognition - sometimes referred to in terms of the 4Es (embodied, embedded, extended, enactive) - has had an important influence on our understanding of social cognition and interaction. After briefly reviewing such influences, I shift to a consideration of what I term the 4As (affect, affordance, agency, and autonomy) to show how these closely related concepts offer a further set of nuanced insights about the roles of social interactions and institutions in embodied emotion regulation. Further, such influences modulate the affordance field (sometimes in a positive direction and sometimes in a negative direction), thus affecting individual as well as collective forms of agency and autonomy. 



Chapter 18: Forms and Functions of Affective Synchrony

Contact Author: Paula Niedenthal (niedenthal@wisc.edu), University of Wisconsin, USA

Author Authors (If Known): Fangyun Zhao 



The tendency to synchronize expressions, vocalizations, and peripheral and central physiology with those of another person or people is caused by motivational, instrumental, and environmental factors. People synchronize their emotional expressions and states when they feel similar to another person, when they need to increase or compensate for other types of communication, and when they are engaged in joint action. In many cases, affective synchrony has benefits for social interaction. Indeed, there is evidence suggesting that synchrony promotes perspective taking, group affiliation, trust, and rapport. This chapter will review existing research on affective synchrony, summarize the social functions of synchrony, and discuss how affective synchrony has signaling functions that foster social understanding.

 

Chapter 19: From Culture to Body and Back: A Journey into Embodied Social Cognition

Contact Author: Anne Maass (anne.maass@unipd.it), University of Padova, Italy

Other Authors (If Known): Maria Laura Bettinsoli and Caterina Suitner

 

Over the past few decades, social psychologists have shown that what and how we know, perceive, think, and reason strongly depends on both shared cultural codes and values (e.g., hugging when meeting a friend in some Western countries) and universal bodily movements (e.g., smiling when one feels happy). Since human cognition is seen as emerging from the interaction between physical and socio-cultural systems, these two facets are treated, most of the time, as non-independent, and it is not always clear when and whether human cognition is operating through a cultural system that encourages certain body movements or the other way around. In the present chapter, we suggest that it is time to disentangle these different directions of influence (e.g., from culture to body versus from body to culture). We will review previous areas of research, identify open problems, and outline possible future developments.

 

Chapter 20: Comparing Metaphor Theory and Embodiment in Research on Social Cognition and Behavior

Contact Author: Mark J. Landau (mjlandau@ku.edu), University of Kansas, USA

 

Psychologists and philosophers have opened up the study of mind to recognize various ways in which bodily states and experiences shape social-cognitive outcomes. This development has invigorated interest in conceptual metaphor-a mental mapping that can transfer a bodily concept to structure a superficially unrelated abstraction (e.g., conceptualizing time in terms of movement). Still, Conceptual Metaphor Theory takes a different approach to the body than do classic embodiment theories, and there are double dissociations involved: Not all metaphors leverage bodily concepts, and not all embodied influences involve metaphor. This chapter explains why this distinction matters for eventually creating a generative taxonomy of embodied effects. It goes further to acknowledge that the distinction is not always so tidy. Fortunately, probing the grey areas provides a context for tackling deep issues (e.g., similarity) that must be addressed by a mature scientific understanding of the mind-body connection. 



Chapter 21: Embodied Perspectives on Personality

Contact Author: Michael D. Robinson (Michael.D.Robinson@ndsu.edu), North Dakota State University, USA

Other Authors (If Known): Adam K. Fetterman, Brian P. Meier, and Michelle R. Persich

 

Research on embodiment has primarily adopted an experimental approach. That is, the emphasis has been on temporary factors and how they affect temporary outcomes. Much less is known about the manner in which embodied cognitions and physical experiences may shape the sorts of personality traits that we have. Starting with Conceptual Metaphor Theory, the chapter will suggest that forces related to mental consistency should tend to pressure individuals to like perceptual experiences (e.g., sweet foods, dark colors) that are consistent with their personality traits (e.g., agreeableness, depressive tendencies). The chapter will also broaden out by considering whether having certain types of bodies (e.g., strong ones, left-handed ones) may predispose us to have certain types of personality traits.

 

Chapter 22: Embodiment in Clinical Disorders and Treatment

Contact Author: John H. Riskind (jriskind@gmu.edu), George Mason University, USA

Other Authors (If Known): Jenn Loya and Shannon Schrader

 

Social-cognitive and clinical-cognitive perspectives to emotions, psychopathology, and treatment originally viewed cognition as an encapsulated set of processes and viewed emotional states and pathology as their outcomes or output. As embodiment perspectives have taken hold in the broader literature, there is greater interest in conceptualizing maladaptive emotions and other clinical disorders from an embodiment perspective as well. From this perspective, bodily states, facial expressions, postures, and gestures may not just be the manifestations of maladaptive psychological and cognitive processes, but may actively contribute to them. Work on the role of embodiment in clinical disorders is still at its early stages, but affords the possibility of new insights for understanding and intervening in the case of psychological symptoms.

 

Section 4: Current Issues and Future Directions

 

The field of embodiment is one in which we seek to know which effects are reliable and which are not (Meier, Fetterman, & Robinson, 2015). In addition, we should work toward integrating the different theories of embodiment that exist (Glenberg et al., 2013), but in the context of recognizing distinctions that should be made (Landau, Meier, & Keefer, 2010). Insights would also occur to the extent that we attend to developmental processes and evolutionary considerations while promoting interdisciplinary work. The final chapters of the book tackle some of these issues and questions, thereby providing a broader context for the earlier material.

 

Chapter 23: An Evolutionary Perspective on Embodiment

Contact Author: Paul Cisek (paul.cisek@gmail.com), University of Montreal, Canada

 

From an evolutionary perspective, embodiment is fundamental. All aspects of brain function, including thoughts and feelings, must ultimately serve overt action or they would not have been supported by natural selection. The question then is how anything that is not embodied could have evolved. In this chapter, I will briefly review the phylogenetic history of the lineage that leads toward humans, emphasizing the continuous elaboration of sensorimotor control mechanisms. These are fully embodied in the sense that none of their elements have any meaning outside of the context of the full control loop that includes the brain, the body, and the environment. However, in a few particular cases, specializations occurred that resulted in internal variables that became partially divorced from that sensorimotor context. Examples include the navigational map of the hippocampus, the categorization processes of the temporal cortex, and the symbolic gestures that control social interaction.

 

Chapter 24: Mechanisms of Embodied Learning through Actions and Gestures: Lessons from Development

Contact Author: Susan Goldin-Meadow (sgsg@uchicago.edu), University of Chicago, USA

Other Authors (If Known): Eliza Congdon

 

The first section of this chapter explores action's role in learning during childhood--for example, how young children's motor actions precede and predict their understanding of other people's actions, intentions, and goals; and how older children's actions with representational objects (e.g., manipulatives in a math lesson) lead to problem-solving insight and conceptual change. In the second section of the chapter, we take a close look at a special type of action: hand gestures. We document the ways in which gesture can lead to learning and cognitive change. We then assess the ways in which mechanisms that underlie gesture's impact on learning are similar to--and different from--mechanisms that underlie learning from actions. We argue that gesture may serve a unique role in embodiment theories because it bridges the gap between body and mind--it is produced directly by the body but, unlike action on objects, gesture is seamlessly integrated with spoken language and has its effect on the world by representing information rather than changing the state of objects. 



Chapter 25: Embodiment in the Lab: Measurement, Theory Testing, and Reproducibility

Contact Author: Michael Kaschak (kaschak@psy.fsu.edu), Florida State University, USA

Other Authors (If Known): Julie Carranza

 

Embodied approaches to cognition claim that cognitive processes are grounded in systems of perception and action planning. A series of straightforward predictions would appear to emerge from this claim. For example, the understanding of language is posited to rely on internal motoric simulations of actions that have been described, and so the processing of action language should elicit activity in the motor system that can be detected through both behavioral and brain measures. Despite the seemingly straightforward predictions of embodiment, the main claims of embodiment have turned out to be difficult to test in an incisive manner, and the findings generated from these tests have turned out to be fickle in many cases. We discuss the theoretical and methodological issues surrounding embodied cognition, and in doing so grapple with issues about theory testing and the reproducibility of research findings.

 

Chapter 26: Alternative Interpretations of Embodiment in Psychology

Contact Author: Robert W. Proctor (rproctor@purdue.edu), Purdue University, USA

Other Authors (If Known): Isis Chong

 

Has embodiment really been neglected in the history of cognitive psychology? To answer this question, it might be useful to distinguish radical views on embodiment, which may not be tenable, with more moderate views. When considering more moderate formulations, it appears that similar ideas have been around for a long time - e.g., in the form of response selection processes, stimulus-response compatibility effects, and the like. The present chapter will review this history as a way of understanding which ideas about embodiment are new and which are not.

 

Chapter 27: The Future of Embodiment Research: Theoretical, Conceptual, and Empirical Challenges Ahead

Contact Author: Bernhard Hommel (bh@bhommel.onmicrosoft.com), Leiden University for Psychological Research, Netherlands

 

Research on embodiment suffers from the lack of a shared theoretical and conceptual basis, so that it seems unlikely that all research sailing under the embodiment flag is actually targeting comparable questions and phenomena. A better organization of the field is therefore necessary to make progress. This will require trading the often metaphorical interpretations of available findings for systematic predictions derived from a to-be-developed theoretical framework. I argue that ideomotor theory provides solid ground for developing such a framework. It would also be necessary to tackle a number of conceptual challenges, such as the question of how exactly one's own motor activity can increase the understanding of perceived action. Finally, it will be important to demonstrate the causality, instead of mere correlation, of the relationship between bodily and motor activity on the one hand and perception and cognition on the other.