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Observed actions affect body-specific associations between space and valence.

Juanma de la Fuente1, Daniel Casasanto2, Julio Santiago1

  • 1Mind, Brain, and Behaviour Research Centre, University of Granada, Spain.

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Summary

Observing manual actions influences our perception of space and value. Experiencing motor fluency, even indirectly, shapes our associations of "good" and "bad" with specific spatial locations.

Keywords:
EmbodimentEmotional valenceHandednessObservational learningPerspectiveSpace

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Neuroscience
  • Embodied Cognition

Background:

  • Right-handers often associate positive concepts with the right side of space and negative concepts with the left.
  • These implicit associations are thought to stem from the differential fluency of performing actions with the right versus left hand.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate if observing manual actions with varying fluency affects observers' spatial-valence associations.
  • To determine if these associations are based on the observer's own perspective or the actor's perspective.

Main Methods:

  • Two experiments were conducted involving an actor performing a bimanual fine motor task while an observer watched.
  • Actors wore a ski glove on one hand to induce motor disfluency on that side.
  • Experiment 1: Observers shared the actor's spatial perspective. Experiment 2: Observers faced the actor, reversing spatial perspectives.

Main Results:

  • In both experiments, actors and observers associated "good" with the side of the actor's free hand and "bad" with the gloved (disfluent) hand.
  • In Experiment 2, associations were egocentric: "good" was linked to the side of observed disfluent actions from the observer's own perspective, potentially reversing the actor's association.

Conclusions:

  • Vicarious experiences of motor fluency and disfluency can shape observers' valence judgments.
  • Observers spontaneously encode the spatial locations of fluent and disfluent actions using their own egocentric reference frames.