What is embodied cognition?
It’s actually the idea that the body and the mind work together and that our bodily
feelings, our physical sensations influence our thoughts, our decisions, our behaviors,
our emotions and what is more important often without our words.
In other words, the temperature of the things we touch, the texture of the things we touch,
the colors we see.
Everything that we feel through our senses affect us not in the most obvious way but
in ways that we could not have imagined.
I know that most people don’t realize how major effect they have on our life.
And it is important because if you walk in the street or if you touch something or the
way I’m sitting now on the sofa or hard chair or the distance between me and the camera.
All these influence the way people perceive me and I perceive others.
And as a consequence the way we behave.
And once we know it we can be less manipulated by these physical experiences and maybe come
to more judgments that are based on the real issue rather than on things which are actually
irrelevant in a way.
So we all know that we use metaphors.
We say somebody’s a warm person.
I had a heavy decision.
I had a hard day, a rough day.
We had a smooth sailing.
If you notice what do we do?
We take a concrete concept and we use it to describe more abstract concepts.
We say somebody’s a warm person so we take a concrete concept such as a warm temperature
and to discard a personality which is more an abstract concept.
Or we say I had a rough day, we use the temperature rough that we all know what it is to describe
something more abstract.
Metaphors are not just figures of speech.
They’re more than that.
They are part of the process of understanding a concept in our cognitions.
And I can start with temperature to show this effect and then I’ll go along all the other
senses.
Temperature.
Let’s start with temperature.
We touch warm and hot and cold things all the time.
We hold our coffee or iced coffee, beverages.
We take a bath or shower.
We go to the swimming pool.
We touch all the time hot and cold things.
How do they affect us.
So as I said before we use the term a warm personality, warm hearted, et cetera.
Two researchers from Yale University, Williams and Barghe, decided to examine what is the
meaning of this metaphor for whether it has more than just a figure of speech.
So what they did was they invited participants to their laboratory and when each participant
came to the lab it was accompanied by an experimenter to the fourth floor in the elevator.
What the participants didn’t know is that the experiment actually started in the elevator
because the experimenter had her hands full and at a certain point she asked each participant
could you hold my cup of coffee for a minute for me while I’m writing your name.
Now for half of the participants she handed a cold cup of coffee, an iced coffee.
For the other half she handed a warm cup of coffee.
That’s all.
Then she took her cup of coffee back.
Then they came to the lab immediately after that and they were asked to judge a person
they never knew about certain characteristics.
The amazing result was that those who held a cold cup of coffee in the elevator judged
that person as less warmer considered personality than those who held a warm cup of coffee.
In other words, those who held a warm cup of coffee judged that person as a nicer person,
a friendlier, warm hearted person compared to those who held a cold cup of coffee.
Now these researchers wanted to find out whether it’s not only affecting judgment of others
but actual behavior.
So in a second experiment they told participants that they were participating in a marketing
study where they had to hold for a few minutes a therapeutic pad.
Have of the subjects held a warm therapeutic pad, the other half a cold therapeutic pad.
And then were was some questions about a product as if it was a marketing study.
And then they were asked – were offered as a reward for their participation either
– to choose either a gift for themselves or a gift for a friend.
Those who held a warm therapeutic pad chose more often a gift for a friend than a gift
for themselves and more often chose a, but more important they chose more often a gift
for a friend than those who held a cold therapeutic pad.
In other words, it affected their generosity.
If I take all these together that just the touch of something warm or cold affected the
way we perceive others, the way we behave and the way we trust others.
Think about how these implications, so many implications in real life situations.
When you interact whether it’s a business negotiation or whether you interact with your
friends, with your family, with your children, with your spouse, with your boss, whatever.
You definitely want that the other person would perceive you as a nicer person.
You definitely want that person to be more generous and trust you more.