The body can affect our thinking even when the thoughts themselves are not abstract. For example how do we estimate distances on a map? Nelson and Simmons (2009) found that people believed it would take longer to travel north than south and that it would cost more to send stuff to a northern address than to a southern location. The metaphor of up and down and the differential effort required to go up or down means that the going South is seen as easier. According to the authors, this is an example of a tendency for consumers to be influenced by a literal take on these spatial metaphors . In a sense there is the danger of ‘literal infection ’ (my expression) when the metaphor is used. Another spatial metaphor is used for time and studies have shown that past and future time concepts are spatially represented relative to the self with past being located to the left and future to the right in a mental time line and an in front (future) behind (past) dimension (Ouellet , Santiago, Funes, & Lupiáñez, 2010). 6 Another use of the up/down metaphor 7 was discovered by Van Rompay , De Vries, Bontekoe, and Tanja-Dijkstra (2012) who demonstrated that luxury goods were subject to the same metaphorical enhancement so if you view a brand in an advertisement where the camera angle is tilted up then that brand is seen as more of a luxury brand and more expensive than one where the camera angle is tilted so you might be looking slightly down [sic] on the brand. Other papers also deal with this vertical dimension. For example Sundar and Noseworthy (2014) claimed that this vertical dimension provides a conceptual metaphor 8 for power and showed that a brand logo positioned near the top of a pack was preferred by consumers if the brand was powerful whereas less powerful brand logos were preferred nearer the bottom of the pack. Interestingly this technique was sensitive enough to distinguish power from status and Walmart Great Value brand was preferred near the top as a high power brand with low status whereas Prada was located near the bottom of the pack although it was high status but low power. Ostinelli , Luna, and Ringberg (2014) investigated another metaphor associated with verticality. According to these authors ‘up’ is associated with positivity and virtue whereas ‘down’ is linked with vice and negativity. However imagining moving up or down has different effects. Using scenarios such as imagining one is moving up or down in a building by using the elevator, they established that ‘going up’ diminishes motivation and performance by enhancing self-worth, with the reverse being true for ‘going down’. 9 So we can see from these findings that the metaphorical link of your body in space in all dimensions is operative on your judgments.
Several links between body and mind can be found where the literal seeps into the metaphorical and produces some interesting if unexpected results. For example, in a study looking at the effect of eating sweet and bitter substances Eskine , Kacinik, and Prinz (2011) found that moral judgments were affected. The physical disgust from consuming the bitter tasting substance produced stronger moral judgments. The research used scenarios with different kinds of immoral behaviour such as stealing and the effect was stronger in those participants with politically conservative views than in participants with politically liberal views. However the sweet consumption condition didn’t differ significantly from the control group. In another study related to eating Troisi and Gabriel (2011) used the category which is known in today’s English as ‘comfort food ’ to see if it would actually alleviate feelings of loneliness. Loneliness is a strong emotion and can also be seen as a need (to be avoided) and the food we eat is layered with cultural meaning as well as providing us with sustenance. It was hypothesised that consuming chicken noodle soup would make people feel less lonely, if they perceived it as a comfort food. Comfort food did provide actual psychological comfort (op. cit., p. 751). In a series of studies, Risen and Critcher (2011) demonstrated that when participants were in what they call a ‘visceral’ state (i.e. thirsty, hungry, warm etc.) they will think that it’s more likely that future states of the world will be like that (op. cit., p. 777). Now it is well-known that being motivated to consummate a need such as lust or thirst concentrates the mind wonderfully as needs must, but this finding is more than that. It’s suggesting your judgment or view of associated problems is also coloured so that your beliefs change. You are more likely to believe in global warming on hot days or your belief in famine as a global threat is more likely if you are hungry. Hong and Sun (2012) found that being physically cold stimulates a need for psychological warmth and the consumer interest here is that for those participants who associate romance movies with psychological warmth, they were the ones for whom physical coldness increased the liking of and willingness to pay for romance movies. This basic shift from physical body needs to psychological satisfaction is exemplified in the various experiments described in Hong and Sun (2012).
The warm-cold metaphor is found in other research in embodied cognition . Lee , Rotman , and Perkins (2014) argued that we can self-regulate using psychological processes as well as physical. For example, they showed that participants in a cool room were able to get ‘warmer’ and thus self-regulate their temperature by preferring a movie package that emphasised social aspects of the movie experience. The process also occurred for a group in a warm room; they preferred the movie package with the emphasis on a solitary individual movie experience. In another experiment they also found that drinking warm tea while judging a prototype of ‘a robot-maid’ had different content to those judgements obtained if the tea was cool. There were more social descriptions such as talking to/interacting with in the content analysis of the judgments in the cool tea conditions and more judgments about the non-social functionality (e.g. can it cook or vacuum) of the robot in the hot tea condition. So we have an embodied cognition effect impacting on self-regulation , a basic function of the body and mind. 10 Shalev (2014) using various ways of prompting ‘dryness’ as a concept such as associated words, pictures of aridity and even dryness related products. He established that dryness affected vitality and effort in various tasks.
Zwebner , Lee, and Goldenberg (2014) talked of the ‘temperature premium ’ as a simple enhancer of value with an embodied cognition link from ‘warm’ (higher than average ambient temperature of local environment ) to ‘emotional warmth’, based on a metaphor ‘affection is warmth’ (cited op. cit., p. 251). Results over a range of ingenious experiments (including relating temperature from local meteorological data to click-through-to-purchase intention on a price comparison website) confirm the conclusion that there is a temperature premium reflected in higher valuation of products. Rai , Lin, and Yang (2017) were interested in the effect of temperature on charitable giving and found that for both cold environments and environments that were cued for cold 11 they would say they would give more to charity and also gave a larger donation to charity. The authors argued that the mediating variable here was social warmth 12 which is metaphorically linked to physical warmth that would be desirable if one was cold. And finally, Rotman , Lee, and Perkins (2017) looked at regret from the viewpoint of embodied cognition. Regret has a pivotal role in consumption as it is an inevitable risk from the consequences of choice and since choice is a key ingredient in most consumption experiences we will encounter the feeling in two forms—action regret when an active decision goes wrong or inactive regret when we failed to act and have passed by a good opportunity. The authors argue that action regret is the type of emotion which produces self-conscious emotion in the short-term and this bodily activity, like for example blushing leads to embodied warmth. Which is what happens and the authors provide us with a list of fascinating results from their experiments on action regret. For example action regret was induced by asking participants to invest in a stock and then telling them the one they had chosen had dropped in value by 50%. Even though this was a game and the regret was a result of role play the participants in this experimental group experienced less regret after looking at an Alaskan cruise advertisement than a similarly designed Caribbean cruise advertisement!
I can’t leave this section without describing how an embodied cognition approach can shed light
on creativity and imagination. Oppezzo and Schwartz (2014) measured both convergent and divergent thinking using various walking situations such as just sitting inside, walked on a treadmill inside, walking outside, or being rolled outside in a wheelchair and discovered that the act itself of walking has a greater positive effect on divergent thinking i.e. creative thinking in the sense of imaginative and novel ideas. As walking usually involves both exercise and a changing visual array as we go from A to B, then it’s important to note that the creativity shown by participants walking outside was the same as for walking on a treadmill indoors. It’s the physical activity that produces creativity. So when your manager suggests yet another ‘meeting’ why not suggest that we have it outdoors? Then you can meet and walk and think better and be healthier.
The Theories
Before we see how our theories can be informed by the literature described above, it’s important to establish just what the theories can account for. As mentioned in the preceding section on The evidence for embodied cognition, the experiments discussed there frequently produce results where one group performed differently from the other group and where these results from the experimental group are significantly different from those of the control group. Rarely if ever are results reported where groups don’t differ. This was noted almost 40 years ago by Rosenthal (1979) and cries for change have been heard since then but to no avail. 13 Journals like significant results. These theories don’t necessarily apply to you personally and your own idiosyncratic mental links even with metaphorical or synesthetic support are not relevant. They may perhaps be relevant in the future if small culturally defined subgroups are found to be predictably different from the majority and you are a member of that subgroup. Consequently any theories that can account for the evidence described in the previous section will only apply as possible propensities for individuals and statistically certain tendencies for groups. 14
Metaphors of the Mind
We’ve seen that aspects of our environment can be linked to our thoughts, feelings and behavioural intentions 15 where the link is metaphorical in nature. So a higher temperature is processed by the senses and perceived as warmth which is then metaphorically linked to emotional warmth. This leap across from one area to another needs to be accounted for and there is a certain irony that for me the best way of imagining how the mind might work so that the evidence can be accounted for theoretically uses two dimensions—yes, metaphorically. One is a depth dimension. There are various metaphors of the mind and one is ‘mind as a stream or river’ (Fernyhough , 2006). Expressions like ‘still waters run deep’ and implications like DEEP = PROFOUND suggest that ‘depth’ connotes more considered, perhaps abstract and general, and maybe less accessible mental entities and ‘shallow’ is less considered (maybe careless). Another example can be found in social psychology. Attitudes are nearer the surface but a particular collection of attitudes can constitute a belief which in turn can be categorised into deeper set of mental objects called values . Put together with a basic metaphor that the mind is a ‘container’ full of different mental ideas and that describing it uses descriptions like ‘plentiful’ or ‘almost empty’ then we can see that a depth dimension is a natural way of talking about one’s mind and the minds of other people. The other dimension though would be across the mind—going from one idea which has been ‘containerised’ to another context where the idea gains fresh meaning from a new associative context. And this of course is metaphor.
Borghi’s (2017) Review
Borghi et al. (2017) raised the issue of whether we can apply embodiment to abstract concepts . Can we say that ideas like ‘honesty’, ‘love’ and ‘justice’ are represented in the mind in the same way as words with an easily identifiable referent such as ‘cat’ or ‘table’? This is not just an important academic question as it has implications for marketers and Torelli , Özsomer, Carvalho, Keh, and Maehle (2012) have argued that abstract value-driven goals should characterise brands . For example ‘protection of the environment ’ is one such goal which is classified as generated by a value associated with ‘concerns with nature’ which is itself further categorised as part of a set of values called ‘self-transcendence’ (op. cit., Table 1). Now these values and others are universal 16 to all humankind which means they can provide a solid foundation for constructing global brand images that are cross-culturally universal at one level and also ‘tuned’ into the specific cultural mix when dealing with brand promotion at a local level. Borghi et al. (2017) provide a systematic overview of the various theories of the embodiment of abstract and concrete concepts with their associated strengths and limitations and this part of the paper is more than adequate for the specialist in the field. Their preferred model is one where abstract concepts are represented in multiple ways in the mind so that any simple distinction between abstract and concrete does not do justice to the various different levels of abstraction that exist in the conceptual maps we possess. I cannot pass by one study without mentioning their findings which seem to represent to me the power of embodiment. They cite Farias , Garrido, and Semin (2013) who showed that participants were more likely to evaluate words associated with conservatism as louder when presented to the right ear, and words associated with socialism as louder when presented to the left ear although the sounds actually did not differ in intensity (Borghi, op. cit., p. 18).
This research on embodiment is recent and fashionable and perhaps needs a few years to garner the usual critical papers and replies and counter-replies that characterise the advance of science. The next section is a phenomenon that’s been around in social and consumer psychology for some years now and has settled in as have we the readers so there is now a well-established body of literature. Let’s look at it.
An Introduction to Priming
Priming is a term with several meanings but the one that is relevant here was originally used in biology. It refers to [a treatment called the prime] “…that induces a particular physiological state in an animal, tissue, etc., usually prior to another treatment or procedure” (Priming, n.d.). In psychology it has been described as a situation where the processing of an initially encountered stimulus can be seen to influence a response to a stimulus that occurs afterwards (Janiszewski & Wyer, 2014, p. 97). In social psychology we can have knowledge structures like stereotypes activated by the context you are in (Bargh , Chen, & Burrows, 1996, p. 230). It appears to be a popular technique as Janiszewski and Wyer (op. cit., p. 97) claim that over 12,000 articles have appeared in the literature over the last 40 years. Before we dip into this evidence base however, it is necessary to justify why we need to critically explore something that appears on the surface to be relatively benign. Janiszewski and Wyer (op. cit., p. 97) lay out five basic characteristics of priming paradigms in experimental psychology. The first two simply state that there is a prime stimulus and a target stimulus which is there in their definition as ‘initially encountered’ and ‘subsequently encountered’, and the prime changes a response to the target. The third says that a particular feature of the prime is responsible for the change in the response to the target and the fourth states that the various ways we use to learn are not included as primes. So if you are waiting to go into an exam and going over in your mind the different formulae you need to know or dates you have to remember then that’s mental rehearsal and the effect is to place these facts high up in a stack of mental priorities. But a picture on a wall in the corridor or even the height of the ceiling 17 might prime different thoughts 18 about a target such as potential exam questions which change your response to the stimulus of a question on the exam paper. The last characteristic is the most controversial and that is priming occurring without awareness . Any suggestions that mental activity that is beyond one’s voluntary control is possible need careful analysis and in the next section we’ll look at these claims in more detail.
Perceiving Without Awareness
In 1957, in New York, reports began to appear in the press of a startling
new phenomenon called ‘subliminal perception ’ (Rogers, 1993). Although the details are sketchy and changed as the event became an ‘urban myth ’ it was claimed at the time that two slogans ‘Eat Popcorn’ and ‘Drink Coca-Cola’ had been inserted into a film on alternate nights. These slogans were presented during the film at an exposure of 1/60,000 of a second i.e. the information was shown for only 0.000017 secs. 19 The sample size i.e. those watching the film was 45,699 and average sales of popcorn increased by 57.5% and sale of Coca-Cola by 18.1%. 20
These results were remarkable to say the least especially as no data beyond the summary findings reported here were presented and even then commentators do not agree completely. The length of time of exposure is such that no participant would be able to recall even seeing the flash of light between frames far less what was on the screen. It seemed to be the case that we are not only able to be influenced by information we don’t recall to the extent some of us obey the advertising type slogans and consume more of both a product and brand . But although Rogers (op. cit.) argue convincingly that the instigator of so called ‘subliminal advertising’ (literally below [sub Lat.] threshold [limen Lat.] advertising) one Jim Vicary was a scammer as well as a liar, the idea still persists that we can be affected by stimuli too weak for us to sense. Therefore it is important to examine carefully what is going on here before we can bury the old concept of subliminal and resurrect it as the more carefully worded expression, ‘perception without awareness ’.
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