Embodiment Makale2 PDF
Embodiment Makale2 PDF
Embodiment Makale2 PDF
DOI: 10.1111/jtsb.12110
CLIODHNA O’CONNOR
ABSTRACT
Recent developments in the psychological and social sciences have seen a surge of
attention to concepts of embodiment. The burgeoning field of embodied cogni-
tion, as well as the long-standing tradition of phenomenological philosophy, offer
valuable insights for theorising how people come to understand the world around
them. However, the implications of human embodiment have been largely
neglected by one of the key frameworks for conceptualising the development of
social knowledge: Social Representations Theory. This article seeks to spark a di-
alogue between Social Representations Theory and embodiment research. It out-
lines the position the body occupies in the existing theoretical and empirical social
representations literature, and argues that incorporating concepts gleaned from
embodiment research may facilitate a more comprehensive account of the
aetiology of social representations. The value of analytic attention to embodiment
is illustrated with reference to a recent study of social representations of neurosci-
ence, which suggested that embodied experience can shape the extent to which
people engage with certain topics, the conditions under which they do so, and
the conceptual and affective content of the ensuing representations. The article
argues that expanding Social Representations Theory’s methodological and
conceptual toolkit, in order to illuminate the interplay between embodied experi-
ence and social communication in the development of common-sense knowledge,
promises productive directions for empirical and theoretical advancement.
INTRODUCTION
As the nascent field of psychology continued to develop through the early- to mid-
twentieth century, the body retained centrality, forming a foundational
touchstone for the successively dominant paradigms of psychoanalysis and
behaviourism. This was to change with the ‘cognitive revolution’ of the 1950s.
The cognitive psychology that dominated the remainder of the 20th century
constituted the human mind as an information-processing machine that was both
decontextualised and disembodied (Danziger, 1990). The body, as well as society,
receded from psychological theory. However, theories of embodiment have lately
undergone a resurgence, restoring the body to the mainstream of psychological
and social theory (Ignatow, 2007; Meier, Schnall, Schwarz, & Bargh, 2012;
Niedenthal, Barsalou, Winkielman, Krauth-Gruber, & Ric, 2005; Rose, 2013;
Schubert & Semin, 2009; Wilson, 2002). This recent research provides strong
evidence for the constitutive influence of the body on the content and process of
thought. Nevertheless, these implications of human embodiment have been
largely neglected by one of the key frameworks for theorising the development
of social knowledge: Social Representations Theory (SRT). This paper draws
on phenomenological philosophy and the emerging field of embodied cognition
to argue that a fuller picture of the development of social representations requires
consideration of the central role that the body plays in forming the conceptual and
affective content from which representation is built.
THEORIES OF EMBODIMENT
The body has a long and turbulent history in western philosophical thought. The
beginning of modern philosophy is traditionally sited in Descartes’ Cogito, which
instigated a fundamental split between mind and body. Descartes (1637/1980)
located the essence of the person in a mental plane that was abstract and transcen-
dental, with the body relegated to a subsidiary supporting role. The legacy of
Cartesian dualism remained evident throughout 18th-19th century philosophical
and religious doctrines, and indeed persists today (Johnson, 1987; Ryle, 1949). It
was a reaction against these prevailing dualist logics that sparked the emergence of
phenomenological philosophy in the 20th century. Merleau-Ponty (1945/2002)
rejected the Cartesian decoupling of mind from body, arguing that human con-
sciousness cannot be abstracted from our corporeality. For Merleau-Ponty, the body
is not simply an object whose existence can be doubted or affirmed by rational
thought (à la Descartes); rather it is the very means of our thinking (Crossley,
2001a). The ‘bodily turn’ in social theory, which is predicated on Merleau-Ponty’s
work, contends that knowledge is not purely idealistic or intellectual, but rooted in
the sensorimotor experiences through which we acquired it: what we saw, heard,
smelled, tasted and touched. Our symbolic capacities are premised on the raw ma-
terial provided by our sensory faculties, because these features of human
embodiment dictate that there are certain ways in which we can (or must) experience
the world, and other ways in which we cannot (Johnson, 1987; MacLachlan, 2004).
There are already many points of overlap and synergy between SRT and
embodiment research. As such, many of the opportunities that embodiment offers
Features of abstract or less understood concepts are mapped onto existing and well-understood
concepts, such that the structure of the developmentally earlier, primary concept is retained in
the newly constructed concept. This structure imbues the newer concept with meaning. When
an abstract concept is scaffolded onto a foundational concept, these concepts become associated,
much in the same way semantically related concepts are naturally associated in the mind.
(Williams, Huang, & Bargh, 2009, p. 1257)
In the embodiment literature, scaffolding suggests that humans use basic dimen-
sions of their sensorimotor experience of the physical world, such as temperature,
The primary purpose of this article is to highlight the opportunities that embodi-
ment offers for SRT. However, it is important to note that the benefits would
likely be reciprocal. In particular, while early phenomenological and anthropo-
logical frameworks characterised the body as inherently social, the social
dimension of embodiment is marginal in current embodied cognition research
(Ignatow, 2007). In common with much experimental psychological research,
embodied cognition studies tend to adopt a methodological individualism that
studies atomised individuals in artificial laboratory contexts. This is despite the
fact that social factors are integral in the wider conceptual context of this research.
For instance, many embodiment priming experiments take as their premise met-
aphors that are common to a society, but never query how those metaphors arose
or are sustained through social communication. The clear implication is that
socio-cultural material influences bodily experience, yet the mechanisms through
which this occurs are not theorised. In contrast, SRT is specifically designed to
explore how ideas are generated in social communication and consolidated in
bodies, behaviour and environment. Many aspects of SRT would prove valuable
in illuminating the social foundations and consequences of embodiment effects,
such as its incorporation of cultural artefacts as research material (Lahlou,
1996) and encouragement of cross-cultural research (e.g. Joffe, Rossetto, Solberg,
& O’Connor, 2013). As such, incorporating SRT principles into the embodiment
sphere can help ‘close the circle’ in theorising the reciprocal links between embod-
ied experience, social interaction and psychological content.
Undoubtedly, integrating the two theoretical traditions will not be entirely
smooth, as many conceptual and methodological tensions remain. Embodied
cognition’s reliance on experimental methods may controvert SRT theorists’
commitment to more naturalistic techniques. A further conceptual difference is
that some (although not all) proponents of embodiment strongly advocate an
anti-representationalist stance, which SRT contradicts by its very name. Both
The study of the body’s role in constituting psychological and social life has
recently been revitalised by emerging research in the field of embodied cognition.
SRT dovetails with this literature in several conceptual and empirical preoccupa-
tions – for example, in the premise that affect and intergroup relations are forma-
tive influences on psychological life, and a concern with collapsing the duality of
person/environment. However, as yet SRT’s engagement with concepts of
embodiment has been minimal. Although in principle SRT acknowledges that
navigating the world is a material as well as social enterprise, in practice its
investigation of the development of social representations has tended to look
externally into the social world, rather than internally into the embodied
experience. Expanding SRT’s field of analysis, such that it illuminates the
interplay between embodied phenomenology and social communication in the
development of common-sense knowledge, promises productive directions for
empirical and theoretical advancement.
Cliodhna O’Connor
Department of Psychology, Maynooth University, Maynooth,
Co. Kildare, Ireland
[email protected]
Acknowledgements. Some of the work reported in this paper was supported by a Uses
and Abuses of Biology grant awarded by The Faraday Institute at St. Edmund’s
College, Cambridge. The author thanks Prof. Helene Joffe for her comments on an
earlier draft of this manuscript.
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