Left is "good": Observed action affects the association between horizontal space and affective valence.

Left is "good": Observed action affects the association between horizontal space and affective valence.

Song, Xiaolei;Yi, Feng;Zhang, Junting;Proctor, Robert W;
Cognition 2019 Vol. 193 pp. 104030
136
song2019leftcognition

Abstract

According to the body-specificity hypothesis, people will associate positive and negative emotional valence with the relative fluency of the left or right responding hand. Prior studies have shown that temporary changes in the fluency of the responding hand can influence the association of emotional valence with left or right, even under circumstances of action observation. But the reason why this change occurs is still controversial. The purpose of the present study was to replicate this finding and to identify the underlying mechanism. Experiment 1 duplicated a modified paradigm "Bob goes to the zoo" to verify the existence of space-valence association for Chinese right-handers. The results indicated that they had the same pattern of right-good/left-bad. However, after action training and observation in Experiment 2 that reduced the fluency of the right hand temporarily, both actors' and observers' space-valence associations were reversed as well. However, when observers' potential motor capacities were constrained by binding their responding hands behind them (Experiment 3) or in front of them (Experiment 4), the observers associated the positive affect with their dominant right hand instead of the left hand in Experiment 3, whereas the observers in Experiment 4 still showed the same association pattern as the actors and the observers in Experiment 2. This study provides further evidence that the effect of alternative motor fluency on space-valence association in the observer is mainly modulated by the connection between the outcomes and space, with body posture also influencing the association.

Citation

ID: 29683
Ref Key: song2019leftcognition
Use this key to autocite in SciMatic or Thesis Manager

References

Blockchain Verification

Account:
NFT Contract Address:
0x95644003c57E6F55A65596E3D9Eac6813e3566dA
Article ID:
29683
Unique Identifier:
S0010-0277(19)30203-3
Network:
Scimatic Chain (ID: 481)
Loading...
Blockchain Readiness Checklist
Authors
Abstract
Journal Name
Year
Title
5/5
Creates 1,000,000 NFT tokens for this article
Token Features:
  • ERC-1155 Standard NFT
  • 1 Million Supply per Article
  • Transferable via MetaMask
  • Permanent Blockchain Record
Blockchain QR Code
Scan with Saymatik Web3.0 Wallet

Saymatik Web3.0 Wallet