5
Many people will be familiar with some of embodied cognition‘s effects. The
experience of feeling transported to a time and place in the distant past as a result of
hearing a song, smelling an odor, or tasting a flavor one associates with the past, is a
consequence of embodied cognition. Other effects become clear through research – studies
that reveal how entwined perception, action and introspective states are such that the
triggering of one prompts the expression and experience of another. For example, several
researchers have shown that priming the elderly stereotype prompts people to walk and to
complete lexical decision tasks more slowly than those in whom the stereotype had not
been primed.2 Study participants asked to recall an unethical deed were more likely to take
antiseptic wipes and complete word tasks with cleansing-related words than those who
recalled an ethical action.3 Participants in a group of studies looking at the effects of
holding heavier versus lighter clipboards showed that those who held a heavier clipboard:
(1) judged higher the value of foreign currencies, (2) judged more important the
employment of fair decision-making practices, (3) gave more consistent judgments on test
questions (revealing that they had given them deeper thought), (4) were less tolerant of
weak (compared to strong) arguments, and (5) judged prospective job candidates as better
overall and more serious about performing the job in quality – than those participants who
2 JA Bargh, M Chen, and L Burrows, ‘Automaticity of social behavior: Direct effects of
trait construct and stereotype activation on action’ in Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, Vol. 71 (1996) pp. 230-244. cited in Niedenthal, Barsalou 2005, p. 184
3 CB Zhong and K Liljenquist ‘Washing Away Your Sins: Threatened Morality and
Physical Cleansing’ in Science Vol. 313, (8 September 2006) pp. 1451-1452.