Embodiment of abstract concepts: Good and bad in right- and left-handers.
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Do people with different kinds of bodies think differently? According to the body-specificity hypothesis, people who interact with their physical environments in systematically different ways should form correspondingly different mental representations. In a test of this hypothesis, 5 experiments investigated links between handedness and the mental representation of abstract concepts with positive or negative valence (e.g., honesty, sadness, intelligence). Mappings from spatial location to emotional valence differed between right- and left-handed participants. Right-handers tended to associate rightward space with positive ideas and leftward space with negative ideas, but left-handers showed the opposite pattern, associating rightward space with negative ideas and leftward with positive ideas. These contrasting mental metaphors for valence cannot be attributed to linguistic experience, because idioms in English associate good with right but not with left. Rather, right- and left-handers implicitly associated positive valence more strongly with the side of space on which they could act more fluently with their dominant hands. These results support the body-specificity hypothesis and provide evidence for the perceptuomotor basis of even the most abstract ideas.
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The equal distribution of handedness and spatial side corresponding to positive in the current sample makes influences on group differences unlikely.
“While associations between spatial side and valence have been reported which differ between handedness [37], the equal distribution of handedness and spatial side corresponding to positive in the current sample make influences on group differences unlikely.”
From Predicting emotional valence in autism: a preregistered study in the Bayesian Brain framework (2026) · cites this paper as [37]
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- Authors
- Casasanto, D.
- Affiliations
- The New School (US)
- Corresponding author
- Casasanto, Daniel
- ORCID
- Casasanto, Daniel
- Venue
- Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
- Published
- 2009
- Volume
- 138
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 351-367
- ISSN
- 0096-3445 (ISSN-L)
- 1939-2222
- OpenAlex
- W2118093655
- Cited by
- 871
- References
- 72
- Citations by year
- 2026: 30 · 2025: 53 · 2024: 41 · 2023: 63 · 2022: 69 · 2021: 49 · 2020: 93 · 2019: 94 · 2018: 50 · 2017: 54 · 2016: 43 · 2015: 37 · 2014: 41 · 2013: 40 · 2012: 34
- FWCI
- 47.74
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- hdl.handle.net
- Licence
- other-oa
- Locations
- Journal of Experimental Psychology General (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- MPG.PuRe (Max Planck Society) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- SSRN Electronic Journal (submittedVersion)
- Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (submittedVersion)
- Max Planck Digital Library (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Funders
- National Research Service Award (F32MH072502)
- Spanish Ministry of Education and Science (SEJ2006-04732/PSIC)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Language, Metaphor, and Cognition
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Hemispheric Asymmetry in Neuroscience
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Embodied and Extended Cognition
- Keywords
- handedness, abstract concepts, emotional valence, spatial mapping, right-handers, left-handers, idioms
- MeSH terms
- Association Learning, Choice Behavior, Concept Formation, Culture, Emotions, Humans, Individuality, Judgment, Functional Laterality, Orientation, Pattern Recognition, Visual, Psychological Theory, Psychomotor Performance, Semantics, Set, Psychology, Space Perception, Thinking, Metaphor
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