Abstract
The body-specificity hypothesis proposes that people with different kinds of bodies tend to think differently in predictable ways (Casasanto, 2009). Previous researches have shown that people tend to make a good judgment on things on the side of their dominant hand which experiences greater motor fluency, and bad judgment on their nondominant side. This conceptual mapping has been shown to be flexible: changing the relative fluency of the hands, or even observing a change in someone else’s motor fluency, results in a reversal of the mapping, such that good things become associated with the side of the nondominant hand (Casasanto & Chrysikou, 2011). The present study consistently tests the body-specificity hypothesis in using people’s height as a test bed. In Casasanto (2009) study, it is shown that about 90% of participants relate “up” with “good”. Is there any different pattern of the association between space and valence among tall and short people? In the present study, we assume that taller people are more likely to make eyes look down and shorter people are more likely to look upward, and the “up is good” effect has interaction with people’s height, which means heights moderate the overall association of good with up. The pre-test is to confirm the premise that taller people feel more comfortable looking down and shorter people feel more comfortable looking up. The experiments are testing whether the association of good with up is weaker in tall people and stronger in tall people. The significant effect is expected to support the body-specificity theory.
Highlights
In our daily life we could find some clue that “up” is usually associated with “good”: the top rank is always written above the bottom rank, we always use some up orientational words to express something good like “cheer up” “look up to”, and some cultural evidence is found to support this mental metaphor (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980)
Previous researches have shown that people tend to make a good judgment on things on the side of their dominant hand which experiences greater motor fluency, and bad judgment on their nondominant side
It is feasible that less tall people related “up” with good things or feelings than short people, because of the assumption that tall people are less familiar with, or less frequently to see the upper visual field
Summary
In our daily life we could find some clue that “up” is usually associated with “good”: the top rank is always written above the bottom rank, we always use some up orientational words to express something good like “cheer up” “look up to”, and some cultural evidence is found to support this mental metaphor (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). Right-handers, whose motor system is more fluent when they interact with right sides associate “good” with “right”, whereas left-handers associate “good” with “left” because they have the motor fluency when they are using their dominant hand (Casasanto & Chrysikou, 2011) Another relevant study changes participants’ motor-fluency temporarily and observes the same pattern. People who wore the right gloves think “left” is “good” like natural lefties This result suggests that it is quite flexible for the adjustments of people’s general judgments since a brief experience could vary the implicit association between space and emotional valence in terms of a reversal of their usual arbitration (Casasanto & Chrysikou, 2011). The expected results will provide some evidence to the view that “good is up” metaphor is influenced by individual’s bodily experience, give support to body-specificity hypothesis, which may give some hint about how human cognitive process is grounded
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