Publication Type
Journal Article
Version
publishedVersion
Publication Date
12-2009
Abstract
The way humans move and comport their bodies is one way they (literally) carry their culture. In pre-wired embodiments, body comportment triggers basic, evolutionarily prepared affective and cognitive reactions that subsequently prime more complex representations. Culture suffuses this process, because (1) cultural artifacts, affordances, and practices make certain body comportments more likely, (2) cultural practices, rituals, schemas, and rules promote the learning of an otherwise underspecified connection between a given body comportment and a particular basic reaction, and (3) cultural meaning systems elaborate basic affective and cognitive reactions into more complex representations. These points are illustrated with three experiments that examine how moral systems can become embodied. We also discuss totem embodiments, in which cultural practices and rituals establish connections between body comportment and complex cultural representations, without the aid of any evolutionarily prepared connection to basic affective and cognitive states.
Keywords
cognition and culture, moral conditions, interpersonal relations and culture
Discipline
Social Psychology | Sociology of Culture
Research Areas
Psychology
Publication
European Journal of Social Psychology
Volume
39
Issue
7
First Page
1278
Last Page
1289
ISSN
0046-2772
Identifier
10.1002/ejsp.671
Publisher
Wiley
Citation
COHEN, Dov, & LEUNG, Angela K. Y..(2009). The Hard Embodiment of Culture. European Journal of Social Psychology, 39(7), 1278-1289.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/714
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.671