In Brief
- The mind uses the body to make sense of abstract ideas. Thus, seemingly trivial sensations and actions—mimicking a smile, holding smooth or rough objects, nodding or giving a thumbs-up—can influence social judgment, language comprehension, visual perception and even reasoning.
- The flexing of our facial muscles does not just reflect our emotions but is necessary for our experiencing them.
- People represent the concepts of past and future in a bodily code that includes direction of movement and perception of space.
- We can now get a grasp of our own feelings and actions by looking beyond our minds to our bodies and the world around us. Such a perspective can point us toward actions that change the way we think and learn.
Why do we look up to those we respect, stoop to the level of those we disdain and think warmly about those we love? Why do we hide dirty secrets or wash our hands of worries? Why do we ponder weighty subjects and feel a load lift after we have made a decision? Why do we look back on the past and forward to the future?
Such turns of phrase, invoking a physical reality that stands in for intangible concepts, might seem like linguistic flights of fancy. But a rapidly growing body of research indicates that metaphors joining body and mind reflect a central fact about the way we think: the mind uses the body to make sense of abstract concepts. Thus, seemingly trivial sensations and actions—mimicking a smile or a frown, holding smooth or rough objects, nodding or giving a thumbs-up—can influence high-level psychological processes such as social judgment, language comprehension, visual perception and even reasoning about insubstantial notions such as time.
This article was originally published with the title Body of Thought.
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11 Comments
Add CommentThese observations are not absurd 'non sequiturs'. I have always believed that non verbal cues, both inbred and culture are far more extensive, complex and granular than we imagine. The things that have been learned so far about body positioning, hand signals and facial responses have barely scratched the surface of non-vocabulary driven communication. I will go even further, I have long believed that the biggest divider between peoples and groups is not racial skin colour or facial features, but rather all these very imperceptible culture signalling differences.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBased on my (former) nine years as both a student and instructor of martial arts, I would also agree completely with these findings. The body has always controled the mind at least equally to the opposite.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNeuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) covers a lot of the content of this article: "The mind and body are part of the same system" "Time line therapy". NLP, a 40+ year-old discipline teaches that metaphor is important in affecting physical behaviour.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGendlin's academic work on this goes back to the 1960s and describes common features of many different methods of making sense of this stuff. Recommended.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.focusing.org/research_basis.html#Felt%20Sense
Even if true I wonder how much ice this cuts. Some of this we probably know intuitively, e.g., comfort tends to make people more genial. In any given situation there are probably more variables that come into play than we can control, as we do not know how they are inter-related. The hope that motivates such research is that we can engineer ourselves into better (more rational, nicer) actions, rather than through education (the stuff parents and some others pass down to children). I doubt it. And we already know, or should know, that people are not purely rational beings, so here is one more way they are not. Any small medical advance is probably of greater benefit than this research. This makes us neither wiser nor more in control of our destinies.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis gives a nice answer to something i noticed many times in real live. When people use their portable phone, you can always see it in the expression of their face, if they are communicating with their lover. They have the same facial expressions as if he/she was present. Equal when people are angry on the phone, you do not have to understand the words, you see it in their gestures and on their face.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFascinating article and angle. The results seem entirely sensible but I am not sure of the cause and effect relationship. For instance, if we drink a warm cup of coffee, does that make us feel warmly about someone else or does it just put us in a good mood and when we are in a good mood we feel nice things about others? Either way, I think the idea that physical objects and cues can filter into our thoughts/feelings seems more than plausible to me...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDoes this mean that there may be some validity to the Feng Shui that I have been laughing at for the past decade or so? It is interesting that the author points out that an informal awareness of this has been around for centuries. It is nice that a rational quantifying of body/mind relationships is occurring.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlthough I am happy to see the Cartesian argument of the mind/body dichotomy being refuted in this article (as I have always thought that it has led to Western biases in application of science and technology) we must remember that the schism between mind and body is first of all better established in Western society, science and medicine. In many parts of the world people may find this discovery trivial as they have never given thought to establishing a false separation between mind and body... In order to prevent further biases from occurring I would urge that before application of this information to any one person, we must keep in mind the Western biases of this study. For example the experiment that connects the past with the left and future with the right is associated with the written english language (and others, but as this is an American magazine I will try to remain focused on American cultural implications). For a person who reads from right and left, therefore, this phenomenon may be reversed. Also, the association of cleanliness of mind and body may be biased as some cultures purify through other methods such as fire or burning. I am only saying this to remind researchers of the biases that can spring up. We are only just recanting on one of the largest biases (I believe) in Western science (Descartes' mind-body dualism), but we need to be careful not to separate individuals from culture, place and time along with other factors. We are not alone and we are NOT as rational as we believe ourselves to be... The concept of rationality, or rather the belief that we posses an ability to separate ourselves from our own biases, is a dangerous thing and I am happy that some have taken the time to reexamine ideas that seemed perfectly rational enough to become "facts" or "rules".
Thank you Siri Carpenter for a wonderful article.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDoes this mean that consciousness is hidden in the elementary particles?
(i)Consider an electron coming from an atomic ionization, through electromagnetic interactions. (ii) Consider another electron coming from a neutron decay through electro-weak interaction. Are these electrons really indistinguishable Fermions in their future lives if undisturbed? If not, this leads to remarkably different Physics, specifically, statistics. After all, the idea that the elementary particles are indistinguishable is not based on any basic logic, it is purely phenomenological....
It seems likely that this mind/body integration may have something to do with the benefits of exercise. I'm fit, therefore I feel competent, healthy, optimistic, etc.
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