Influence of overt head movements on memory for valenced words: a case of conceptual-motor compatibility

The present article reports 3 studies that demonstrate the influence of overt behavior on recognition and elucidates the theoretical basis for such an influence. In 2 experiments it was found that participants who were induced to nod while incidentally encoding positive and negative adjectives were more likely to recognize positive adjectives, whereas participants who were induced to shake their heads were more likely to recognize negative words. In a third experiment, with a double-task procedure, it was shown that when encoding was accompanied by head movements that were compatible with words, participants were better at performing the secondary task than when words and head movements were incompatible. These findings suggest that performing incompatible motoric and conceptual tasks concurrently requires more cognitive capacity. Where this capacity is allocated and when it is withdrawn depends on the characteristics of the task. Implications of this mechanism for different phenomena in social psychology (e.g., facial feedback and masking of emotional displays) are discussed.