Page 147 - C:\Users\STEVEB~1\AppData\Local\Temp\msoF8C5.tmp

ϭϰϳ

3$57 - /(&785( - 7+( 32:(5 2) <285 0,1'

The body may collect sensory information, like a computer collects information via mouse and
keyboard, but according to the traditional view of cognition, it’s the brain that does the
thinking.
Numerous respected studies over the past decade challenge that view, suggesting instead that
our thoughts are inextricably linked to physical experience.

In one study, neuroscientists exposed volunteers to different odours. When they did, they found
that getting a whiff of a fishy odour evoked feelings of suspicion; likewise, when research
participants were exposed to another person behaving suspiciously, they were better able to
detect a fishy scent.

The range of findings demonstrating embodied cognition is impressive. A small sampling: Look-
ing upward nudges people to call to mind others who are more powerful, while looking down
prompts thoughts of people we outrank.

People judge a petition to be more consequential if it is handed to them on a heavy clipboard
rather than a lightweight one. Cricketers with high batting averages perceive the ball as bigger
than poorer hitters. Botox injections preventing frowning also slow people’s comprehension of
sentences describing angry and sad events.
On their surface, findings like these seem like mere fodder for amusing cocktail conversation, but
some cognitive scientists argue the evidence points to something far deeper and more radical.
It’s not just that our bodies influence thought: It’s that thought itself is a system that
simultaneously takes place in the brain, the body and the environment around us.

In fact, we fundamentally perceive the world in terms of our ability to act on our environment,
says Sabrina Golonka, a cognitive psychologist at Leeds Metropolitan University in the United
Kingdom. “We’re not seeing the world in inches and feet — we’re seeing the world in arm units
or leg lengths,” she says.

In one study, researchers at the University of Virginia asked volunteers to estimate the steepness
of a hill just by looking at it from the bottom. The volunteers’ answers correlated with how
physically suited they were to climbing the hill: They rated the hill as steeper when they wore a
heavy backpack, and likewise, athletes described the hill as less steep than volunteers who
were unfit.

Different Bodies, Different Thoughts?
Such findings raise a mind-bending question: Do different bodies dictate different thoughts? In
one study that confronts that idea, cognitive scientist Daniel Casasanto of the New School for
Social Research in New York reasoned that if people use their physical perceptions and motor
experiences to construct mental simulations, then physical characteristics that cause us to
interact with the environment in systematically different ways should in fact send people down
different mental pathways.

To test the possibility, Casasanto and colleagues examined spatial preferences in left- and
right-handers. He found that people prefer the choices presented to them on their dominant
side, a phenomenon that supports what he calls the “body-specificity hypothesis.” When asked
to select which job applicant to hire, which product to buy or which alien creature seemed
most trustworthy, lefties tended to choose the selection that was on the left, and vice versa.