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A more recent version of this article was published on [04-12-2011]

When Left Is “Right”

Motor Fluency Shapes Abstract Concepts

  1. Evangelia G. Chrysikou4,5
  1. 1Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
  2. 2Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition, and Behaviour, Radboud University
  3. 3Department of Psychology, The New School for Social Research
  4. 4Psychology Department, University of Pennsylvania
  5. 5Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Pennsylvania
  1. Daniel Casasanto, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, P.O. Box 310, 6500 AH, Nijmegen, The Netherlands E-mail: casasanto{at}alum.mit.edu

Abstract

Right- and left-handers implicitly associate positive ideas like “goodness” and “honesty” more strongly with their dominant side of space, the side on which they can act more fluently, and negative ideas more strongly with their nondominant side. Here we show that right-handers’ tendency to associate “good” with “right” and “bad” with “left” can be reversed as a result of both long- and short-term changes in motor fluency. Among patients who were right-handed prior to unilateral stroke, those with disabled left hands associated “good” with “right,” but those with disabled right hands associated “good” with “left,” as natural left-handers do. A similar pattern was found in healthy right-handers whose right or left hand was temporarily handicapped in the laboratory. Even a few minutes of acting more fluently with the left hand can change right-handers’ implicit associations between space and emotional valence, causing a reversal of their usual judgments. Motor experience plays a causal role in shaping abstract thought.

Article Notes

  • The authors declared that they had no conflicts of interest with respect to their authorship or the publication of this article.

  • This research was supported in part by a McDonnell Scholar Award and a National Research Service Award fellowship (F32MH072502) to Daniel Casasanto and by a National Institutes of Health grant (R01MH70850) to Sharon L. Thompson-Schill.

  • Additional supporting information may be found at http://pss.sagepub.com/content/by/supplemental-data

  • Received November 17, 2010.
  • Accepted December 17, 2010.

This Article

  1. Published online before print March 9, 2011, doi: 10.1177/0956797611401755 Psychological Science
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