Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Introducing Embodied Grounding
- PART ONE EMBODIED LANGUAGE AND CONCEPTS
- PART TWO EMBODIMENT OF SOCIAL COGNITION AND RELATIONSHIPS
- PART THREE EMBODIMENT AND AFFECT
- 9 Affective Coherence
- 10 The Embodiment of Emotion
- 11 The Embodied Emotional Mind
- 12 Expression Entails Anticipation
- Index
- References
11 - The Embodied Emotional Mind
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Introducing Embodied Grounding
- PART ONE EMBODIED LANGUAGE AND CONCEPTS
- PART TWO EMBODIMENT OF SOCIAL COGNITION AND RELATIONSHIPS
- PART THREE EMBODIMENT AND AFFECT
- 9 Affective Coherence
- 10 The Embodiment of Emotion
- 11 The Embodied Emotional Mind
- 12 Expression Entails Anticipation
- Index
- References
Summary
The environment is filled with emotionally significant information. On a walk in a forest, an individual might encounter a friendly dog or a disgruntled bear. In nearly every social interaction, an individual might be confronted with facial, vocal, and postural signs of emotion. Thus, spouses smile, colleagues frown, children pout, babies gurgle, and students tremble with anxiety or giggle with joy. Even computers deliver “just joking” faces by e-mail whereas stores and snacks lure with smiley faces. The importance of such information is now well documented: Emotionally charged objects can capture attention, bias perception, modify memory, and guide judgments and decisions (for an overview, see Eich, Kihlstrom, Bower, Forgas, & Niedenthal, 2000; Winkielman, Knutson, Paulus, & Trujillo, 2007).
Even abstract symbols that refer to emotional events, such as language, can rapidly shape an individual's behavior and trigger physiological responses. For example, most children learn through language rather than direct emotional experience that they should not put their fingers in electrical outlets or stand under a tree in a storm. Such information retains its heat in thought and language, and can be generalized to novel events (Olsson & Phelps, 2004). In adults, simple words like “the next tone will be followed by a shock” elicit a fear reaction (Phelps, O'Connor, Gateby, Grillon, Gore, & Davis, 2001) whereas terms of endearment trigger positive arousal (Harris, Ayçiçegi, & Gleason, 2003).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Embodied GroundingSocial, Cognitive, Affective, and Neuroscientific Approaches, pp. 263 - 288Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008
References
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