TY  - JOUR
A1  - Körner, Anita
A1  - Topolinski, Sascha
A1  - Strack, Fritz
T1  - Routes to Embodiment
JF  - Frontiers of Psychology
N2  - Research on embodiment is rich in impressive demonstrations but somewhat poor in comprehensive explanations. Although some moderators and driving mechanisms have been identified, a comprehensive conceptual account of how bodily states or dynamics influence behavior is still missing. Here, we attempt to integrate current knowledge by describing three basic psychological mechanisms: direct state induction, which influences how humans feel or process information, unmediated by any other cognitive mechanism; modal priming, which changes the accessibility of concepts associated with a bodily state; sensorimotor simulation, which affects the ease with which congruent and incongruent actions are performed. We argue that the joint impact of these mechanisms can account for most existing embodiment effects. Additionally, we summarize empirical tests for distinguishing these mechanisms and suggest a guideline for future research about the mechanisms underlying embodiment effects.
KW  - priming
KW  - simulation
KW  - grounded cognition
KW  - embodied cognition
KW  - metaphors
Y1  - 2015
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-125960
VL  - 9
IS  - 940
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Topolinski, Sascha
A1  - Strack, Fritz
T1  - Corrugator activity confirms immediate negative affect in surprise
JF  - Frontiers in Psychology
N2  - The emotion of surprise entails a complex of immediate responses, such as cognitive interruption, attention allocation to, and more systematic processing of the surprising stimulus. All these processes serve the ultimate function to increase processing depth and thus cognitively master the surprising stimulus. The present account introduces phasic negative affect as the underlying mechanism responsible for this switch in operating mode. Surprising stimuli are schema discrepant and thus entail cognitive disfluency, which elicits immediate negative affect. This affect in turn works like a phasic cognitive tuning switching the current processing mode from more automatic and heuristic to more systematic and reflective processing. Directly testing the initial elicitation of negative affect by surprising events, the present experiment presented high and low surprising neutral trivia statements to N = 28 participants while assessing their spontaneous facial expressions via facial electromyography. High compared to low surprising trivia elicited higher corrugator activity, indicative of negative affect and mental effort, while leaving zygomaticus (positive affect) and frontalis (cultural surprise expression) activity unaffected. Future research shall investigate the mediating role of negative affect in eliciting surprise-related outcomes.
KW  - phasic affective modulation
KW  - processing fluency
KW  - intuition
KW  - surprise
KW  - EMG
KW  - elevator EMG activity
KW  - facial expressions
KW  - semantic coherence
KW  - emotion
KW  - judgments
KW  - attention
KW  - memory
KW  - affect
KW  - expectancy
Y1  - 2015
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-144068
VL  - 6
IS  - 134
ER  -