On the ups and downs of emotion : testing between conceptual-metaphor and polarity accounts of emotional valence–spatial location interactions

Lynott, Dermot and Coventry, Kenny R. (2014) On the ups and downs of emotion : testing between conceptual-metaphor and polarity accounts of emotional valence–spatial location interactions. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 21 (1). pp. 218-226. ISSN 1069-9384

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Abstract

In the past decade, many studies have focused on the relationship between emotional valence and vertical spatial positions from a processing perspective. Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) work on conceptual metaphor has traditionally motivated these investigations, but recent work (Lakens in J Exp Psychol: Learn, Mem Cogn, 38: 726–736, 2012) has suggested that polarity-based perspectives offer an alternative account of response time patterns. We contrasted the predictions of these two theories using a new facial emotion recognition task, in which participants made speeded responses to happy or sad faces on a display, with the spatial location of those faces being manipulated. In three experiments (two-alternative forced choice tasks and a go/no-go task), we found a pattern of responses consistent with a polarity-based account, but inconsistent with key predictions of the conceptual-metaphor account. Overall, congruency effects were observed for positively valenced items, but not for negatively valenced items. These findings demonstrate that polarity effects extend to nonlinguistic stimuli and beyond two-alternative forced choice tasks. We discuss the results in terms of common-coding approaches to task–response mappings.

Item Type:
Journal Article
Journal or Publication Title:
Psychonomic Bulletin and Review
Uncontrolled Keywords:
/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/3200/3205
Subjects:
?? emotion recognition conceptual metaphorspatial congruencyrepresentation polarityexperimental and cognitive psychology ??
ID Code:
65728
Deposited By:
Deposited On:
17 Jul 2013 14:59
Refereed?:
Yes
Published?:
Published
Last Modified:
15 Jul 2024 14:06