Previous research revealed that mouth movements influence attitudes . Covert subvocal articulations inducing muscular contractions resembling ingestionmovements were preferred over expectoration-like movements, unveiling a relationship between vocal muscles' wandering and motivational states such as approach and avoidance.These findings, explained in terms of embodied cognition, suggest that specific movements are directly connected to, and more importantly, automatically activate concordant motivational states. The oral approach avoidance effect was replicated using the original stimulus set and a new set of stimulus developed for Portuguese. Results from two highpowered (total N = 407), independent replications, reveal that the preference for inward words (over outwards) exists in both sets, but to a greater extent in the pool phonetically adapted for Portuguese.

Previous research has revealed a stable preference for words with inward consonantalarticulation patterns (from the front to the back of the mouth; e.g., BENOKA), over outwardwords (from the back to the front; e.g., KENOBA). Following the oral approach-avoidance account suggesting that the in-out effect is due to the resemblance between consonantalarticulations patterns and ingestion/expectoration, recent findings have shown that when judging inward-outward names for objects with particular oral functions, valence did not modulate the effect while the oral function did. To replicate and examine further the role of edibility and valence in shaping the in-out effect, we asked participants (N = 545) to rate inward and outward names for edible and non-edible products while controlling for valence. Results revealed that the motor-to-affect link was only observed for edible products, regardless of valence.

In five studies (N = 638), we extended the in-out effect to person perception, examining the influence of oral approach-avoidance movements activated by word articulation, on preference, sociability and competence judgments of mock-usernames. Users with inward, in contrast to outward-usernames, were always preferred and judged as warmer. However, they were judged as equally competent. The differential impact of the in-out effect in the core dimensions of social perception suggests that the phenomenon relies on the affective mechanism of approach-avoidance that is only pertinent to judgments related to the warmth dimension. The present research provides further support for the link between the activation of oral muscles and impression formation, emphasizing the relevance of the in-out effect for the person perception domain and embodied social cognition.

Recent research has shown that mouth movements, produced even during silent reading, can affect stimulus evaluation. Words featuring systematic wanderings of consonantal stricture spots ranging from the front to the rear of the mouth (inward) are preferred to words with wanderings in the opposite direction (outward). In four experiments, the authors extended this in-out effect from a basic laboratory setting to a more ecologically relevant domain and examined the boundary conditions of possible applications to marketing. In this research, the inward/outward words presented were embedded in common brand imagery such as labels, logos, and product packages.Either with plain graphic information or with more visually informative packaging, inward names were always preferred (all p-values < 0.001). These results indicate that concurrent information that competitively feeds into the preference judgment did not have diagnostic value when compared to the articulation direction. Such prevalence of the effect even when embedded in more complex stimulus emphasizes the relevance of investigating oral kinematics effects and the need to further research other sensorimotor phenomena in consumer behavior. K E Y W O R D Sapproach-avoidance, branding, embodiment, oral articulation

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