Abstract
Approach and avoidance orientations are key elements of adaptive regulation at the evaluation-behavior interface. On the one hand, continuous evaluations of the world fuel approach-avoidance reactions as a function of the individual’s immediate environment. On the other hand, in turn these individual-environment adjustments influence evaluations. A grounded perspective of social cognition, placing the sensorimotor aspects of individual-environment interactions at the core of cognition, has much to offer for the understanding of evaluative processes. Despite the growing enthusiasm for a grounded view of cognition and action in the approach-avoidance literature, its core principles are seldom reflected at the operationalization level. In this paper, we relied on the insights of a grounded perspective to propose more encompassing operationalizations of approach-avoidance orientations and investigate their influence on evaluations. Across six studies, we varied the approach-avoidance operationalizations (upper-body incline, upper-body posture and walking steps) and incrementally considered the grounded assumptions. We failed to obtain the theorized positive effect of approach (as compared to avoidance) on evaluations. Interestingly, further exploratory analyses on two studies conducted in Virtual Reality suggested that the more participants felt being present in the situation, the more the approach-avoidance ecological actions activated the corresponding neuropsychological systems. We discuss these emergent findings in light of grounded cognition and the notion of feeling of presence.
Highlights
“Science manipulates things and gives up living in them” Merleau-Ponty (1964)
A grounded cognition perspective has much to say about approach-avoidance orientations, as it addresses the dynamic interactions between the brain, the body, and the environment
As participants judged the task more tiring in the avoidance than in the approach condition (MApproach = 2.60, SEApproach = 0.23; MAvoidance = 3.45, SEAvoidance = 0.21; F(1, 155) = 7.47, p = 0.007, βZ = −0.26, 95% IC [−0.45, −0.07]), we included the tiredness judgment in the analysis to control for this potential confound10
Summary
“Science manipulates things and gives up living in them” Merleau-Ponty (1964). Individuals’ interactions with their social world are steered by two fundamental forces: approach and avoidance — i.e., the energization to move toward or away (Price and Harmon-Jones, 2016). Since the advent of the cognitivist revolution, cognition has been considered to involve a relatively independent brain system performing computations on abstract and amodal representations (i.e., involving the symbolic translation of perceptual, motor and introspective states) Within this computationalist tradition, approach and avoidance were considered as amodal action representations and the body was a mere vehicle executing those actions based, for instance, on their threshold activation (Bower, 1981; Carver and Scheier, 2000). Approach and avoidance were considered as amodal action representations and the body was a mere vehicle executing those actions based, for instance, on their threshold activation (Bower, 1981; Carver and Scheier, 2000) It has been argued since, that such a view of cognition cannot be adaptive as it is far too rigid and detached from ongoing brain-body-environment interactions, and these objections set the stage for alternative views
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