In recent years, embodiment theories have become a major conceptual framework for understanding the mind, including the social mind (Niedenthal, Barsalou, Winkielman, Krauth-Gruber, & Ric, 2005; Schubert & Semin, 2009). The idea of embodiment theories is that higher level processing is grounded in the organism's sensory and motor experiences; hence, such frameworks are often called grounded cognition theories (Barsalou, 2008; Wilson, 2002). According to embodiment theories, processing of information about, for example, tools, flavors, melodies, driving directions, emotional faces, social and personality characteristics, and even abstract social, moral, emotional, or motivational concepts, along with many other kinds of information, is influenced, informed, associated with, and sometimes dependent on perceptual, somatosensory, and motor resources. In this chapter, we illustrate advances in the power of this account of how information processing works and discuss where new limits and challenges are being revealed. The structure of the chapter is roughly as follows. We begin by contrasting embodiment theories with their main competitors-theories that emphasize the amodal, propositional nature of mental representations. We then review some evidence for embodied processing in more cognitive domains. We then move on to a detailed description of research on embodied processing's role in emotional perception and emotional language comprehension, the role of embodied metaphor in understanding interpersonal relations and morality, and the role of mimicry in social judgment. Finally, we discuss the

There is a broad theoretical and empirical interest in spontaneous mimicry, or the automatic reproduction of a model’s behavior. Evidence shows that people mimic models they like, and that mimicry enhances liking for the mimic. Yet, there is no satisfactory account of this phenomenon, especially in terms of its functional significance. While affiliation is often cited as the driver of mimicry, we argue that mimicry is primarily driven by a learning process that helps to produce the appropriate bodily and emotional responses to relevant social situations. Because the learning process and the resulting knowledge is implicit, it cannot easily be rejected, criticized, revised, and employed by the learner in a deliberative or deceptive manner. We argue that these characteristics will lead individuals to preferentially mimic ingroup members, whose implicit information is worth incorporating. Conversely, mimicry of the wrong person is costly because individuals will internalize “bad habits,” including emotional reactions and mannerisms indicating wrong group membership. This pattern of mimicry, in turn, means that observed mimicry is an honest signal of group affiliation. We propose that the preferences of models for the mimic stems from this true signal value. Further, just like facial expressions, mimicry communicates a genuine disposition when it is truly spontaneous. Consequently, perceivers are attuned to relevant cues such as appropriate timing, fidelity, and selectivity. Our account, while assuming no previously unknown biological endowments, also explains greater mimicry of powerful people, and why affiliation can be signaled by mimicry of seemingly inconsequential behaviors.

No abstract

Recent findings indicate interventions can boost executive functions—mental processes that have long been thought to be static and not open to change. The authors examined whether and how short-term social interactions could create such cognitive benefits. Study 1 found that basic get-to-know-you interactions (with or without an explicit cooperative goal) boosted executive function relative to controls and as much as nonsocial intellective activities. In contrast, interactions involving a competitive goal resulted in no boosts. Studies 2 and 3 tested a proposed mechanism for the results—that people need to engage with others and take their perspective to realize cognitive boosts. The findings show that competitive interactions, if structured to allow for interpersonal engagement, can boost executive functions. The results highlight how social functioning can enhance core mental capacities.

No abstract