{"id":61375,"date":"2014-02-06T09:00:03","date_gmt":"2014-02-06T14:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=61375"},"modified":"2015-09-01T21:39:17","modified_gmt":"2015-09-02T02:39:17","slug":"thats-heavy-the-mind-body-metaphor-connection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2014\/02\/06\/thats-heavy-the-mind-body-metaphor-connection\/","title":{"rendered":"That&#8217;s &#8220;Heavy&#8221;: The Mind-Body-Metaphor Connection"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last year I was tickled to write about a cool study showing that, if a person grows up with a language that writes from left to right, then numerical estimates of things like weight or height will, on average, be smaller when a person is imperceptibly and unknowingly leaning to the left. \u00a0Seriously, it&#8217;s awesomely fun research and you can read about it <a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2013\/09\/25\/to-feel-younger-lean-to-the-left\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Today I have the equally fun pleasure of sharing a research study on weight and importance. \u00a0It turns out that, when people are holding something heavy, they will report an issue to be more serious, compared to when they are holding something lighter.<\/p>\n<p>Some examples come from a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.igroup.org\/schubert\/papers\/jostmann_psci_2009.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">set of studies<\/a>\u00a0by psychologist Nils Jostmann and colleagues.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>In the first study, European participants were asked to guess the value of various foreign currency in euros. \u00a0Some were given a heavy clipboard on which to mark their estimates, and others a light clipboard. \u00a0Those who held the light clipboard estimated, on average, lesser values.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>In a second study, subjects were asked to estimate the importance of college students having a voice in a decision-making process involving grants to study abroad. \u00a0Participants with the heavy clipboard felt that it was more important for students to have a voice.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>In a third, subjects were asked to report whether they liked their city after reading a biography of the mayor and indicating how the felt about him. \u00a0If they carried the heavy clipboard, there was a relationship between their estimation of the mayor and that of the city, but not if they carried a light clipboard. \u00a0In this case, the importance of their feelings about the mayor weighed heavier on their evaluation of the city if the clipboard was heavy.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>What is driving these findings?<\/p>\n<p>In English, and several other languages as well, weight is used as metaphor to signify importance. \u00a0The authors hypothesized that this abstraction can be triggered by concrete experiences of weight, like holding something heavy. \u00a0They call this &#8220;embodied cognition.&#8221; \u00a0Our thinking is\u00a0affected by the connection between our bodies, their relationship with objects, and metaphors in our minds.<\/p>\n<p>Another nail in the Descartian mind-body dualism coffin.<\/p>\n<p><em>Cross-posted at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.psmag.com\/navigation\/health-and-behavior\/mind-body-metaphor-connection-75125\/\" target=\"_blank\">Pacific Standard<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<span class=\"ft_signature\"><em><a href=\"http:\/\/lisa-wade.com\/\">Lisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/American-Hookup-New-Culture-Campus\/dp\/039328509X?ie=UTF8&amp;*Version*=1&amp;*entries*=0\">American Hookup<\/a><em>, a book about college sexual culture; a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Gender-Interactions-Institutions-Lisa-Wade\/dp\/0393931072?ie=UTF8&amp;*Version*=1&amp;*entries*=0\">textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/lisa-wade.com\/intro\/\">Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a><em>.\u00a0You can follow her on <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/lisawade\">Twitter<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/lisawadephd\/\">Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last year I was tickled to write about a cool study showing that, if a person grows up with a language that writes from left to right, then numerical estimates of things like weight or height will, on average, be smaller when a person is imperceptibly and unknowingly leaning to the left. \u00a0Seriously, it&#8217;s awesomely [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":61389,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[664,218,675,693,37],"class_list":["post-61375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-biology","tag-bodies","tag-psychology","tag-public-opinion","tag-social-psychology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2014\/02\/35.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61375"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61375\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62024,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61375\/revisions\/62024"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}