Language That Puts You in Touch With Your Bodily Feelings: The Multimodal Responsiveness of Affective Expressions
Year: 2009
Type: article
Abstract: Observing and producing a smile activate the very same facial muscles. In Experiment 1, we predicted and found that verbal stimuli (action verbs) that refer to emotional expressions elicit the same facial muscle activity (facial electromyography) as visual stimuli do. These results are evidence that language referring to facial muscular activity is not amodal, as traditionally assumed, but is instead bodily grounded. These findings were extended in Experiment 2, in which subliminally presented verbal stimuli were shown to drive muscle activation and to shape judgments, but not when muscle activation was blocked. These experiments provide an important bridge between research on the neurobiological basis of language and related behavioral research. The implications of these findings for theories of language and other domains of cognitive psychology (e.g., priming) are discussed.
Source: Psychological Science
Authors: Francesco Foroni, Gün R. Semin
Institutions: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Utrecht University
Language: English
Subfield: Social Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
Award: G8494581987
OpenAlex ID: W2156920416