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Embodiment of abstract categories in space… Grounding or mere compatibility effects? The case of politics

Publication . Farias, Ana Rita; Garrido, Margarida Vaz; Semin, Gün R.

In two experiments, the role played by stimulus response compatibility in driving the spatial grounding of abstract concepts is examined. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to classify politics-related words appearing to the left or the right side of a computer monitor as socialist or conservative. Responses were given by pressing vertically aligned keys and thus orthogonal to the spatial information that may have been implied by the words. Responses given by left or right index finger were counterbalanced. In Experiment 2, a lexical decision task, participants categorized political words or non-words presented to the left or the right auditory channels, by pressing the top/bottom button of a response box. The response category labels (word or non-word) were also orthogonal to the spatial information that may have been implied by the stimulus words. In both experiments, responses were faster when socialism-related words were presented on the left and conservatism-related words were presented on the right, irrespective of the reference of the response keys or labels. Overall, our findings suggest that the spatial grounding of abstract concepts (or at least politics-related ones) is independent of experimentally driven stimulus-response compatibility effects.

2016Journal article

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The “ins” and “outs” of person perception: The influence of consonant wanderings in judgments of warmth and competence

Publication . Garrido, Margarida; Godinho, Sandra; Semin, Gün R.

In five studies (N=638), we extended the in-out effect to person perception, examining the influence of oral approach-avoidance movements activated by word articulation, on preference, sociability and competence judgments of mock-usernames. Users with inward, in contrast to outward-usernames, were always preferred and judged as warmer. However, they were judged as equally competent. The differential impact of the in-out effect in the core dimensions of social perception suggests that the phenomenon relies on the affective mechanism of approach-avoidance that is only pertinent to judgments related to the warmth dimension. The present research provides further support for the link between the activation of oral muscles and impression formation, emphasizing the relevance of the in-out effect for the person perception domain and embodied social cognition.

2019Journal article

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