Disentangling multimodal processes in social categorization

The effect of an embodied intervention on responsibility: put a load on one's shoulder

Responsibility is an essential part of our social life. Although responsibility is an abstract concept, it can be represented with concrete ideas through conceptual metaphor. Expressions like "carry a lot of responsibility," "shoulder the responsibility" shows that responsibility can be understood as a load on shoulder that one has to carry. Accordingly, this study tests the question that does putting a burden on one's shoulder makes him/her more responsible or not. In order to investigate this, on each trial, we asked participants to decide between risky situations that vary in magnitude, probability of win/lose, and the ambiguity level in two conditions: "self" and 'group." Each subject wears a vest with a load on each shoulder in half of the trials. As expected, Most of participants choose to defer on the group trials more than on the self-trials. This difference between numbers of deferring in group and self conditions is called responsibility aversion. Results indicate that responsibility aversion scores are lower (responsibility-taking was greater) in the state of wearing the vest than in the form of not wearing the vest significantly. We provided evidence that the abstract concept of responsibility is linked to bodily experiences of feeling load on the shoulder consistent with an embodied cognition theory.

Sensory Stimuli to Sustainable Social Wellbeing: A Multimodal Approach Based on Warm Scent

Sensory experiences affect individuals' judgment and behavior through the metaphors that experiences carry. The literature has demonstrated that the perception of warmth activates concepts related to positive meaning and metaphors, such as consideration and gentleness, which increase individuals' tendency to help or relate to others. This study hypothesized that warm olfactory stimuli influence intention toward prosocial behavior by increasing the need for social connectedness (NSC). The first experiment (n = 123) demonstrated that the actual warm scent increased participants' intentions for prosocial behavior and that the effect of the actual warm scent was mediated by NSC. Using Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk), a second experiment (n = 995) was conducted the showed that warm scent simulated via visual stimuli (i.e., a multimodal approach) led to prosocial behavior intention as well. The results of the study provide academic and managerial insights into how to improve prosocial behavior intention, which is essential for the sustainable development of societies.

Vertical position can affect categorization of the rich and the poor in Chinese culture

This study explored whether vertical position affects social categorization of the rich and the poor. Experiment 1 used high- and low-income occupations as stimuli, and found participants categorized high-income occupations faster when they were presented in the top vertical position compared to the bottom vertical position. In Experiment 2, participants responded using either the “up” or “down” key to categorize high- and low-income occupations, and responded faster to high-income occupations with the “up” key and low-income occupations with the “down” key. In Experiment 3, names identified as belonging to either rich or poor individuals were presented at the top or bottom of a screen, and the results were the same as in Experiments 1 and 2. These findings suggest that social categorization based on wealth involved perceptual simulations of vertical position, and that vertical position affects the social categorization of the rich and the poor.

Spatial Size Can Affect Social Categorization of the Rich and the Poor

Previous research has shown that representation of certain social-category knowledge, such as that regarding gender, involves the process of perceptual simulation. The present research extended these findings and explored whether social categorization based on wealth, which is an important dimension of social categorization, involved perceptual simulation of spatial size. In Experiment 1, we used high- and low-income occupations as stimuli; categorization of high-income occupations presented in larger font was faster relative to that of those presented in small font, and vice versa for low-income occupations. In Experiments 2, 3, and 4, we used high-income occupations without social power and low-income occupations, names designated as those of rich and poor people, and idioms describing wealth and poverty as stimuli, respectively. All three experiments showed that responses to wealth-related stimuli in larger font were faster relative to those to the same stimuli in small font, and vice versa for poverty-related stimuli. These results suggest that social categorization based on wealth is grounded in perceptual simulation of spatial size.

On Feeling Warm and Being Warm

Previous investigations have linked laboratory manipulations of physical warmth to momentary increases in interpersonal warmth. However, replication concerns have occurred in this area, and it is not known whether similar dynamics characterize daily functioning. Two daily diary studies (total N = 235) suggest an affirmative answer. On days in which participants felt physically warmer, they perceived themselves to be interpersonally warmer and more agreeable, irrespective of the outdoor temperature. These findings are consistent with frameworks proposing that people draw on concepts of physical warmth to represent feelings of interpersonal warmth and they highlight the value of using daily diary and within-subject designs to investigate embodied cognition as well as other priming effects.

On God-Belief and Feeling Clean

Recent work has shown robust associations between morality and cleanliness. However, it is not known whether this association is equally consequential for everyone. I predicted that individuals high (vs. low) in God-belief would be more likely to draw upon feelings of cleanliness to represent their moral concerns. To test this hypothesis, I used a 2-week daily sampling protocol. In an initial session, I measured participants’ ( N = 135) level of God-belief. I then measured participants’ levels of daily cleanliness, neuroticism, impulsivity, and prosocial behaviors every evening. Daily feelings of cleanliness predicted lower levels of neuroticism but only for those high in God-belief. Daily impulsive behaviors predicted lower feelings of cleanliness, and daily prosocial behaviors predicted higher feelings of cleanliness. God-belief moderated these effects such that they were stronger for those higher, than lower, in God-belief. In closing, I discuss potential reasons for these moderation effects and other theoretical considerations.

Emotion biases voluntary vertical action only with visible cues

Emotional information influences our bodily experiences according to the space-valence metaphor (positive/negative is up/down). In the present study, we examined whether visible and invisible emotional stimuli could also modulate voluntary action. After observing an emotional image (e.g., positive, neutral, or negative), participants used a joystick to arbitrarily position a dot stimulus in a display. The emotional image was either masked (masked condition) or not (unmasked condition) via a continuous flash suppression technique, i.e., dynamic interocular masking. We found that in the unmasked condition, the placed position of the dot was significantly higher after observing the positive image compared with the negative image, but this difference was not present in the masked condition. Our findings suggest that conscious emotional information is necessary for activating sensorimotor representations of vertical directions, and voluntary action is performed based on these activations.

The Cognitive Consequences of Formal Clothing

Drawing from literature on construal-level theory and the psychological consequences of clothing, the current work tested whether wearing formal clothing enhances abstract cognitive processing. Five studies provided evidence supporting this hypothesis. Wearing more formal clothing was associated with higher action identification level (Study 1) and greater category inclusiveness (Study 2). Putting on formal clothing induced greater category inclusiveness (Study 3) and enhanced a global processing advantage (Study 4). The association between clothing formality and abstract processing was mediated by felt power (Study 5). The findings demonstrate that the nature of an everyday and ecologically valid experience, the clothing worn, influences cognition broadly, impacting the processing style that changes how objects, people, and events are construed.