Space-valence mapping of social concepts
- Introduction: The body-specificity hypothesis states that in right-handers, positive concepts should be associated with the right side and negative concepts with the left side of the body. Following this hypothesis, our study postulated that negative out-group ethnic stereotypes would be associated with the left side, and positive in-group stereotypes would be associated with the right side. Methods: The experiment consisted of two parts. First, we measured the spatial mapping of ethnic stereotypes by using a sensibility judgment task, in which participants had to decide whether a sentence was sensible or not by pressing either a left or a right key. The sentences included German vs. Arabic proper names. Second, we measured implicit ethnic stereotypes in the same participants using the Go/No-go Association Task (GNAT), in which Arabic vs. German proper names were presented in combination with positive vs. negative adjectives. Right-handed German native speakers (N = 92) participated in an online study. Results: As predicted, inIntroduction: The body-specificity hypothesis states that in right-handers, positive concepts should be associated with the right side and negative concepts with the left side of the body. Following this hypothesis, our study postulated that negative out-group ethnic stereotypes would be associated with the left side, and positive in-group stereotypes would be associated with the right side. Methods: The experiment consisted of two parts. First, we measured the spatial mapping of ethnic stereotypes by using a sensibility judgment task, in which participants had to decide whether a sentence was sensible or not by pressing either a left or a right key. The sentences included German vs. Arabic proper names. Second, we measured implicit ethnic stereotypes in the same participants using the Go/No-go Association Task (GNAT), in which Arabic vs. German proper names were presented in combination with positive vs. negative adjectives. Right-handed German native speakers (N = 92) participated in an online study. Results: As predicted, in the GNAT, participants reacted faster to German names combined with positive adjectives and to Arabic names combined with negative adjectives, which is diagnostic of existing valenced in-and outgroup ethnic stereotypes. However, we failed to find any reliable effects in the sensibility judgment task, i.e., there was no evidence of spatial mapping of positive and negative ethnic stereotypes. There was no correlation between the results of the two tasks at the individual level. Further Bayesian analysis and exploratory analysis in the left-handed subsample (N = 9) corroborated the evidence in favor of null results. Discussion: Our study suggests that ethnic stereotypes are not automatically mapped in a body-specific manner.…
Author details: | Katharina KühneORCiD, Kristina Nenaschew, Alex MiklashevskyORCiDGND |
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DOI: | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1070177 |
ISSN: | 1664-1078 |
Title of parent work (English): | Frontiers in Psychology |
Subtitle (English): | Do we arrange negative and positive ethnic stereotypes from left to right? |
Publisher: | Frontiers |
Place of publishing: | Lausanne, Schweiz |
Further contributing person(s): | Andriy Myachykov, Sascha Topolinski, Oksana Tsaregorodtseva |
Publication type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Date of first publication: | 2022/12/09 |
Publication year: | 2022 |
Release date: | 2023/04/12 |
Tag: | GNAT; body-specificity hypothesis; embodied cognition; ethnic stereotypes; implicit associations; in-group stereotypes; out-group stereotypes |
Volume: | 13 |
Number of pages: | 13 |
Funding institution: | Universität Potsdam |
Funding institution: | Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) |
Funding number: | PA 2022_164 |
Funding number: | Projektnummer 491466077 |
Organizational units: | Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Strukturbereich Kognitionswissenschaften |
DDC classification: | 1 Philosophie und Psychologie / 15 Psychologie / 150 Psychologie |
Peer review: | Referiert |
Grantor: | Publikationsfonds der Universität Potsdam |
Publishing method: | Open Access / Gold Open-Access |
License (German): | CC-BY - Namensnennung 4.0 International |
External remark: | Zweitveröffentlichung in der Schriftenreihe Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe ; 828 |