Embodying Approach Motivation

Are Positive Interventions Always Beneficial?

Can people improve their lives by smiling more, trying to have a better posture, and by thinking about good memories? Can individuals become more successful by deliberatively engaging in positive actions and thoughts? Do people feel better by following recommendations from naïve psychology? In the present article we discuss these questions, noting that although some popular interventions thought to be universally beneficial (e.g., inductions of happiness, self-affirmation, empowerment, self-distancing) can sometimes yield positive outcomes, at other times the outcomes can also be negative. Taking an empirical approach based on experimental evidence, we postulate that understanding the underlying processes discovered in the science of persuasion is the key for specifying why, when, and for whom these practical initiatives are more likely to work or to backfire.

"Science Manipulates the Things and Lives in Them": Reconsidering Approach-Avoidance Operationalization Through a Grounded Cognition Perspective

Approach and avoidance orientations are key elements of adaptive regulation at the evaluation-behavior interface. On the one hand, continuous evaluations of the world fuel approach-avoidance reactions as a function of the individual's immediate environment. On the other hand, in turn these individual-environment adjustments influence evaluations. A grounded perspective of social cognition, placing the sensorimotor aspects of individual-environment interactions at the core of cognition, has much to offer for the understanding of evaluative processes. Despite the growing enthusiasm for a grounded view of cognition and action in the approach-avoidance literature, its core principles are seldom reflected at the operationalization level. In this paper, we relied on the insights of a grounded perspective to propose more encompassing operationalizations of approach-avoidance orientations and investigate their influence on evaluations. Across six studies, we varied the approach-avoidance operationalizations (upper-body incline, upper-body posture and walking steps) and incrementally considered the grounded assumptions. We failed to obtain the theorized positive effect of approach (as compared to avoidance) on evaluations. Interestingly, further exploratory analyses on two studies conducted in Virtual Reality suggested that the more participants felt being present in the situation, the more the approach-avoidance ecological actions activated the corresponding neuropsychological systems. We discuss these emergent findings in light of grounded cognition and the notion of feeling of presence.

Grounding evaluative concepts

Evaluative concepts qualify as abstract because they seem to go beyond what is given in experience. This is especially clear in the case of moral concepts. Justice, for example, has no fixed appearance. Less obviously, aesthetic concepts may also qualify as abstract. The very same sensory input can be regarded as beautiful by one person and ugly by another. Artistic success can also transcend sensory accessible features. Here, we focus on moral badness and aesthetic goodness and argue that both can be grounded in emotional responses. Emotions, in turn, are grounded in bodily perceptions, which correspond to action tendencies. When we conceptualize something as good or bad (whether in the moral or aesthetic domain), we experience our bodily responses to that thing. The moral and aesthetic domains are distinguished by the emotions that they involve.This article is part of the theme issue 'Varieties of abstract concepts: development, use and representation in the brain'.