Acta Psychologica 144 (2013) 243–249

Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect

Acta Psychologica

j ourna l homepage: www.e lsev ie r .com/ locate /actpsy

Biases in evaluation of neutral words due to motor compatibility effect

Audrey Milhau a,⁎, Thibaut Brouillet b, Denis Brouillet a

a EPSYLON Laboratory (EA 4456), University Montpellier III, Montpellier, Franceb CERSM Laboratory (EA 2931), Université Paris Ouest-La Défense, Nanterre, France

⁎ Corresponding author at: EPSYLON Laboratory, Site StIII, Route de Mende, 34199 Montpellier CEDEX 5, France.

E-mail address: audrey.milhau@gmail.com (A. Milha

0001-6918/$ – see front matter © 2013 Elsevier B.V. Allhttp://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2013.06.008

a b s t r a c t

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Received 17 December 2012Received in revised form 3 June 2013Accepted 17 June 2013Available online xxxx

PsycINFO classification:2340, Cognitive processes

Keywords:Embodied cognitionActionEmotionLaterality

This study aims to demonstrate the effect of action fluency on emotional evaluation, specifically to show thatneutral words can be evaluated positively or negatively depending on motor activity and evaluative setting.Right-handers naturally tend to associate positive (negative) valence to the right (left) part of space (Casasanto,2009).We extend these associations to lateralized behaviors by studying the combined effect of motor fluency oflateral arm movements and the evaluative scale on the subjective evaluation of neutral words. Three experi-ments evidenced that, for right-handers, the realization of fluent rightward arm movements and the use of anevaluative scale congruentwith their valence/laterality associations (left negative, right positive) led to a positiveevaluation of neutral words, while non-fluent leftward movements and an incongruent scale led to a negativeevaluation. This study demonstrates that emotion–action associations are experience-based, and influenced byfunctional and situational constraints.

© 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

Recent studies suggest that people tend to associate emotion andphysical space, and more specifically emotional valence (the negativeor positive aspect of an item) and laterality. For instance, Casasanto(2009) demonstrated that right-handers tend to associate positivevalence with the right side and negative valence with the left side,whereas left-handers tend to do the opposite. When asked to placetwo animals designated as “good” and “bad” on two boxes located onthe right and on the left, right-handers tended to place the good animalon the right box and the bad animal on the left box, while left-handerspreferred to put the good animal on the left box and the bad animal onthe right box (Casasanto, 2009, Experiment 1). Similarly, when askedto choose the most agreeable character out of the two, right-handedparticipants preferred the one located on the right, while left-handerschose predominantly the left one (Casasanto, 2009, Experiment 4). Theauthor explains this process with the Body-specificity Hypothesis: Individ-uals with different bodies think differently, even when apprehendingabstract concepts like valence. This hypothesis is coherent with theembodied and situated approach of cognition articulated by groundedcognition theory (Barsalou, 2008; Glenberg, 1997; Zwaan, 2004). Underthe assumption that a certain type of body implies a certain type ofbody utilization behavior, associations of valence and laterality cantherefore be deemed experienced-based (Brookshire & Casasanto, 2012;Willems, Hagoort, & Casasanto, 2010).

Charles, Université MontpellierTel.: +33 4 67 60 11 83.u).

rights reserved.

The body-specificity hypothesis refers to the notion ofmotor fluencyto explain why right- and left-handers associate valence and lateralitydifferently.Motor fluency describes the ease associatedwith the perfor-mance of a specific action or to the action of a specific effector (Brouillet,Ferrier, Grosselin, & Brouillet, 2011; Cannon, Hayes, & Tipper, 2010;Casasanto, 2009). Similar to other kinds of fluency (i.e., perceptual andconceptual fluency [see Winkielman, Schwarz, & Nowak, 2002 for areview]), motor fluency seems to induce the generation of a posi-tive emotion (Reber, Winkielman, & Schwarz, 1998; Winkielman& Cacioppo, 2001). In other words, the facility achieved throughmotor fluency leads to a non-conscious positive marking of the activity.Indeed, motor fluency has been linked with preferences for actionsor things that people can perform or handle with their hands. Peopleprefer graspable objects, such as spatulas, when the objects' handlesare oriented to make them easy to grasp (Ping, Dhillon, & Beilock,2009). Skilled typists prefer the pairs of letters that are easy to type,even when they are not typing (Beilock & Holt, 2007).

Since right-handers aremore used to acting with their right arm, andare consequently more dexterous on the right side of their peri-personalspace, actions performed with their right hand are more fluent thanactions performed with their left hand. Similarly, left-handers act morefluently with their left hand than with their right hand. The studies onmotorfluency cited abovehave led to the expectation that actingfluentlywith the dominant hand allows for the positive marking of an action.This hedonic connotation of motor fluency explains the associationsdescribed by the body-specificity hypothesis between positive evalua-tion and dominant side of the body. In other words, motor tendenciesalso predict judgments about abstract ideas and things people cannever manipulate with their hands, such as when left- or right-handers

244 A. Milhau et al. / Acta Psychologica 144 (2013) 243–249

attribute more intelligence or honesty to alien creatures depicted ontheir dominant side of a page than to those depicted on their non-dominant side (Casasanto, 2009).

Casasanto and Jasmin (2010) have extended the valence/lateralityassociations to lateralized movements with the observation of thearm gestures accompanying speech in the candidates of United Statespresidential elections in 2004 and 2008. The observation of spontaneousarmmovements during campaign speeches led them to distinguish onceagain between right- and left-handers. Right-handed candidates (JohnKerry and George W. Bush) tend to use more right-hand gestures inspeeches with a positive connotation and left-hand gestures in negativediscourses, while left-handed candidates (John McCain and BarackObama) showed the opposite pattern (right-hand gestures for negativediscourses and left-hand gestures for positive ideas).

Since those associations of valence and laterality are based on themanual dominance of people, one could expect that these links arefixed and constant. Yet, it has been demonstrated that these dominantpreference associations could be reversed by changes in motor habits:the simple fact of acting more readily with the non-dominant handfor a few minutes can lead right-handers to manifest left-handers'associations of valence and laterality (Casasanto & Chrysikou, 2011).

These studiesmeasured the effects of the associations of valence andlaterality on preferences. Recently, the question was raised of whetherthose associations could affect response times in a valence judgmenttask manipulating the compatibility of valence and response hand.de la Vega, de Filippis, Lachmair, Dudschig, and Kaup (2012) testedright-handers and left-handers using a valence judgment task of emo-tional words. Participants were asked to respond with both hands(i.e., dominant and non-dominant) by pressing response keys locatedrespectively on the left and the right side of a keyboard, correspondingto either a positive or negative response (the position of each valencewas counterbalanced across participants). Their results showed thatboth right- and left-handers responded more quickly with their domi-nant hand to positive words than to negative words (see Kong, 2013,for similar results on evaluation of faces).

It must be noted that this positive marking of the dominant sidedoes not only stem from a superiority of the dominant hand overthe other hand, but that it also shows in lateral movements of onlyone hand: For both right- and left-handers, each hand acts faster withinits own lateral space than in contralateral space. The right hand actsmore quickly in the right hemi-space, and the left hand respondsmore quickly in the left hemi-space (Fisk & Goodale, 1985; see alsoElliott et al., 1993; Hodges, Lyons, Cockell, Reed, & Elliott, 1997). Thisfacilitation of action in ipsilateral space implies that even the dominanthand, normally defined as the fluent one, can act non-fluently whenresponding in contralateral space. In other words, a right-hander actingwith his right hand is acting more fluently when his action is orientedrightward than leftward. We could therefore deduce that the non-dominant hand itself might act more fluently on its own side than onthe other side: A right-hander would act more fluently with the lefthand when acting leftward than rightward. Therefore, fluent actionsof the non-dominant hand (i.e., left-hand acting leftward for aright-hander) should be connoted positively. The motor fluency of thenon-dominant hand might be demonstrated by a compatibility effectbetween the actions of this effector and the processing of positivewords, or by a positive coloration of neutral items as a result of theexecution of this kind of movement.

It is important to mention that de la Vega et al.'s (2012) resultswere obtained when the response key to answer “positive”was local-ized on the side of the dominant hand (on the right for right-handersand on the left for left-handers). The manipulation of the position ofeach valence on the response device is a critical source of variationin the study of valence/laterality associations. Classically, evaluationscales in valence judgment tasks are presented on a horizontal con-tinuum from the left meaning negative to the right meaning positive.This standard presentation follows the usual associations expressed

by right-handers and described by the body-specificity hypothesis,and therefore agrees with the large majority of right-handed partici-pants (though a large amount of studies independently test right- andleft-handers). But when studying the validity of the body-specificityhypothesis, the presentation of a scale that is already congruent withthe tested associations might interfere with the results. It would there-fore seem relevant to counterbalance the orientation of the scale in avalence judgment task.

In this study, our ambition was to examine the respective effectsand the interaction of two factors on a valence judgment task: thefluency of lateral arm movement (to the right or to the left) and thecongruency of the evaluative scalewith the body-specificity hypothesis.To do so, right-handed participants were asked to perform a valencejudgment task of neutral words, preceded by a spatial detection taskused as a pretext to generate lateral movements. The affective evalua-tion was done on a horizontal scale with the labels “positive” and“negative” assigned either to the usual places for a right-hander (rightpositive, left negative: congruent condition), or to the opposite sides(right negative, left positive: incongruent condition).

We hypothesized that since fluent lateral movements induce apositive connotation, evaluations should therefore be more positiveafter a rightward movement (fluent for a right-hander) than a leftwardmovement (non-fluent for a right-hander), independently of thevalence of the item judged. We also expected right-handed participantsto evaluatewordsmore positively when using a scale which agreedwiththeir valence/laterality associations rather than a scale that violatedthose combinations. Finally, we expected an interaction of valence andmovement fluency, such that right-handers should evaluate the neutralwords as more positive after a fluent lateral arm movement to theright andwhen the scale was congruentwith their associations (i.e., pos-itive anchored to the right), and as more negative after a non-fluentmovement to the left and when the scale was incongruent with thisusual mapping of valence and laterality. In other words we expected aneffect of compatibility between laterality and scale orientation.

2. Experiment 1

2.1. Method

2.1.1. ParticipantsThirty-five students from the University of Montpellier took part

in this experiment for extra course credits. The participants includedthirty-two women and three men, all right-handed according toself-declaration and aged from 19 to 23 years (M = 20.5 years;SD = 1.1). They were all native French speakers with a good orcorrected vision. All participants gave their informed consent priorto the experiment.

2.1.2. MaterialFifty-two neutral words were selected in two affective French

norms: Bonin et al. (2003) and Syssau and Font (2005). In Bonin etal.'s (2003) norm, 43 words were chosen among the 12.5% mostneutral words, with the highest values of tangibility (mean value4.7 on a scale of 0 to 5), imagery (mean value 4.25) and frequency(mean value 3.22). In Syssau and Font's (2005) norm, 9 words werechosen among the 13% most neutral words; we only consideredwords with an equivalent percentage of positive and negative evalu-ations (for example, “minute”: 79% of participants judged it neutral,11% judged it positive and 10% judged it negative). Word lengthranged from 3 to 10 letters. Words were presented in size 36 BlackArial font (measuring 1 cm in height and between 2 and 6 cm inwidth on screen).

2.1.3. ProcedureThe experiment was programmed on Director® software, and

conducted on a Toshiba laptop with a 17-inch screen. Participants

Table 1Average evaluations of neutral words according to Movement of response and Scaledesign (from 1, negative, to 5, positive).

Scale design Leftwardmovement

Middlemovement

Rightwardmovement

M SD M SD M SD

Congruent 3.14 0.19 3.11 0.23 3.30 0.20Incongruent 2.65 0.37 3.00 0.32 2.98 0.50M 2.89 3.05 3.14

245A. Milhau et al. / Acta Psychologica 144 (2013) 243–249

sat approximately 20 in. from the computer screen. Responses weregiven exclusively with the dominant right hand using the laptop'stouchpad (5 cm by 8 cm) and three keys on the keyboard.

Each trial consisted of three steps. First, participants had to clickon a white square presented in the center of the lower part of thescreen, using the touchpad located under the center of the keyboard.This instruction allowed us to control the participant's hand positionbefore the presentation of words. Second, after the click on thesquare, a word appeared in the center of the screen. For 1 s, theword was shown in black, and then a color change occurred: Thefirst letter (25% of the items), the last letter (25% of the items) orthe entire word turned orange. These proportions were chosen toprevent participants from understanding the aim of lateral changesand movements. Participants were instructed to detect the part ofthe word which changed. To respond, they had to press one of thethree buttons on the keyboard with their right hand: the left one forwhen the first letter was colored (key ‘s’ on a QWERTY keyboard),the right one when the last letter was colored (key ‘;’), and the middleone if the entire word changed color (key ‘h’, aligned with the centerof the screen). Since the participant's hand rested on the touchpad inthe first step, providing the answer implied an arm movement in theleftward, rightward or forward directions, respectively (the touchpadwas located approximately 10 cm away from the response keys). Theword remained on the screen until the participant pressed a responsekey. Finally, the third step consisted of the valence judgment. Afterparticipants pressed one of the response keys, a horizontal 5-pointscale replaced the word, ranging from 1, very negative, to 5, verypositive (the participants did not see the numbers; only the signs“+” and “−” on each end of the scale were shown). To evaluate thevalence of the word, participants had to move (with their righthand) the cursor along the scale using the touchpad located belowthe keyboard and aligned with the center of the screen. The scale'sdesign was counterbalanced, with half the participants seeing acongruent scale (supporting right-handers' associations of valence andlaterality: positive on the right and negative on the left) and the otherhalf an incongruent scale (positive on the left and negative on the right).

The experiment consisted of 52 trials, with a random presentationfor each participant.

2.2. Results

Only data corresponding to correct answers in the color detectiontask were preserved (we excluded 0.13% of responses in the evaluationtask). The remaining data were analyzed with a mixed ANOVAwith thefactor Movement (rightward vs. leftward vs. middle) manipulatedwithin participants and the factor Scale (congruent vs. incongruent)manipulated between participants. Mean evaluations of words foreach condition are exposed in Table 1.

Analysis ofmean evaluations revealed a significant effect concerningthe principal effect of the factor Movement, F(2,66) = 6.67, p = .002,ηp

2 = 0.17. Partial analysis showed that this effect was due to a morepositive evaluation following a rightward movement than followinga leftward movement, F(1,33) = 8.55, p = .006, ηp

2 = .21, and amore positive evaluation following a middle-oriented movement thanfollowing a leftward movement, F(1,33) = 9.79, p = .004, ηp

2 = .23.The comparison between rightward and middle-oriented movementswas not significant (p = .20).

The effect of scale type also proved significant, F(1,33) = 16.78,p = .0003, ηp

2 = 0.34. When the scale was congruent, responses indi-cated more positive evaluations than when the scale was incongruent.

The interaction of the factors Scale and Movement was also signifi-cant, F(2,66) = 4.09, p = .02, ηp

2 = 0.11. Focusing on each scale sepa-rately, analysis revealed that for the incongruent horizontal scale, onlyleftward movement differed from other movements, implying a morenegative evaluation than for rightward movement, F(1,33) = 7.63,p = .009, ηp

2 = .19 or middle-oriented movement, F(1,33) = 23.47,

p = .00003, ηp2 = .42. For the congruent scale, it was the rightward

movement that implied a more positive evaluation than the middle-oriented movement, F(1,33) = 4.47, p = .04, ηp

2 = .12. The compari-son between rightward and leftward movements was not significant(p = .18).

Consequently, after a rightward movement, evaluations were morepositive with the congruent scale than with the incongruent scale,F(1,33) = 6.31, p = .02, ηp

2 = .16, and after a leftward movement,evaluations were more negative with the incongruent scale than withthe congruent one, F(1,33) = 24.4, p = .00002, ηp

2 = .43.

2.3. Discussion

Consistently with our predictions, right-handed participantsmanifested a preference for the congruent scale, and evaluated neutralwords more positively after a movement to the right when the scalewas congruent and more negatively after a movement to the leftwhen the scale was incongruent. These results reflect the combinedeffect of motor fluency and of the integration of the body-specificityhypothesis into the evaluative scale on the generation of emotionalevaluation. When the lateral arm movement was fluent and whenthe scale corresponded to a right-hander's associations of valenceand laterality, participants gave a positive evaluation. Conversely, theperformance of a non-fluent movement associated with the presenta-tion of an incongruent scale led to a negative connotation.

In light of our experiment's design, an alternative explanation forour results can be offered. Since the signal determining which actionhad to be performed was itself lateralized, one may explain theevaluation variations as an effect of attention direction: Participants'attention was directed to the left or the right by the color change,and this focus, rather than the performance of lateralized arm move-ments, might have determined the subsequent evaluation. In thisview, the associations of valence and action would then only beincidental, emerging from co-occurrence, but without any relationshipof causality: Evaluation would not be determined by the motor activity.In order to isolate this possibility fromour interpretation, we reproduceda similar valence judgment task without asking participants to react tothe color change in words: They remained passive when the wordschanged colors, and then evaluated them on the valence scale. Wehypothesized that obtaining the same effect of emotional coloration ofneutral words (i.e., positive evaluation for rightward arm movementand congruent scale, and negative evaluation for leftward arm move-ment and incongruent scale) would support the claim that associationsbetween valence and laterality are due to the direction of attention,and therefore cannot be explained by motor fluency.

3. Experiment 2

3.1. Method

3.1.1. ParticipantsThirty-two students from the University of Montpellier took part

in this experiment for extra course credits. The participants includedtwenty-four women and eight men, all right-handed according to self-declaration, and aged from 19 to 43 years (M = 21,3 years; SD = 5).

246 A. Milhau et al. / Acta Psychologica 144 (2013) 243–249

All were native French speakers with a good or corrected vision. Allparticipants gave their informed consent prior to the experiment.

3.1.2. Material and procedureThe equipment and procedure were the same as in Experiment 1,

except that participants were not instructed to press a key on thekeyboard following the color change of words. Participants waited for2 s after the color changed before the scale appeared on the screen.

3.2. Results

Since there was no longer a color detection task, all data werepreserved and run through amixed ANOVAwith the factor Color Change(first letter vs. last letter vs. entire word) manipulated within partici-pants and the factor Scale (congruent vs. incongruent) manipulatedbetween participants. Mean evaluations of words for each condition areexposed in Table 2.

Analysis of mean evaluations revealed that the factor Color Changedid not reach significance (p = .59). On the other hand, we obtained amain effect of the factor Scale, F(1,30) = 15.42, p = .0005, ηp

2 = 0.34,with more positive evaluations using the congruent scale than theincongruent one.

The interaction between Color Change and Scale was significant:F(2,60) = 10.81, p = .0001, ηp

2 = 0.26. We therefore analyzedeach scale separately to study potential simple effects of Color Changethat did not appear as amain effect. Regarding the incongruent horizontalscale, both changes in the first and last letters led to more negative eval-uations of words than changes in the entire word (first letter vs. entireword: F(1,30) = 12.58, p = .001, ηp2 = .30; last letter vs. entire word:F(1,30) = 10.47, p = .003, ηp2 = .26). For the congruent scale, the twolateral changes led to more positive evaluations than changes in theentire word (first letter vs. entire word: F(1,30) = 4.92, p = .03,ηp2 = .14; last letter vs. entire word: F(1,30) = 11.77, p = .002,ηp2 = .28). For each scale, the difference between the color changes ofthe first and the last letter did not reach significance (for the congruentscale, p = .31; for the incongruent one, p = .91).

In fact, after a color change in the last letter, evaluations weremore positive with the congruent scale than with the incongruentscale, F(1,30) = 25.59, p = .00002, ηp

2 = .46, and after a change inthe first letter, evaluations were more negative with the incongruentscale than with the congruent one, F(1,30) = 14.29, p = .0007,ηp

2 = .32. The color change of the entire word did not lead to differ-ent evaluations on the two scales (p = .16).

3.3. Discussion

When the participant did not have to respond to the color changes,this variation had no impact on the subsequent evaluation of neutralwords. This absence of effect shows that the visual attention directed bythe color change was not sufficient to create an emotional coloration ofneutral stimuli by itself. This non-relevant dimension of the task did notinfluence the evaluation, thusly leading us to reject this alternative expla-nation. Therefore, lateral arm movements performed in Experiment 1seemednecessary to produce the predicted pattern of results. Evaluationsvaried only according to the type of scale. Indeed, after a color change onthe left, the evaluation of neutral words was positive on the congruent

Table 2Average evaluations of neutral words according to side of Color Change and Scaledesign (from 1, negative, to 5, positive).

Scale design First letter Entire word Last letter

M SD M SD M SD

Congruent 3.32 0.40 3.15 0.35 3.43 0.23Incongruent 2.68 0.55 2.95 0.42 2.69 0.53M 3.00 3.05 3.06

scale and negative on the incongruent scale, with these two evaluationstaking place on the right side of the scale. An explanation based on theInhibition of Return effect (Posner & Cohen, 1984) may seem legitimate:it would point to a tendency not to attend to a location that was recentlyvisited. But when studying evaluations following a color change on theright, results show that, for the two scales, responses were given on theright side (positive for the congruent scale, negative for the incongruentscale). This effect cannot be interpreted as a tendency to respond eitheron the same side as, or on the opposite side of, that fromwhich attentionwas directed.

Our results demonstrate that after a lateralized color change(either on the first or the last letter) the subsequent evaluation ofneutral words seems to follow the emotional connotation linked tothe evaluative situation, that is to say the valence associated withthe scale. As mentioned above, the design of the scale could be coher-ent or not with right-handers' associations of valence and laterality.The congruency and incongruency with those associations appearto be linked to a positive or negative valence, respectively, thathas been projected on the evaluation of neutral words. In otherwords, when the scale presented was consistent with the congruentassociations of valence and laterality for right-handers, participantsevaluated words positively after a color change on the right, as wellas on the left. Conversely, when the scale's design was incongruentwith their expectancies, participants judged words negatively forboth left and right color changes. Hence, in the absence of a fluentor non-fluent arm movement, participants seemed to rely on themapping of the evaluative scale in order to evaluate the neutralwords they had just focused on.

However, it should be noted that such was not the case for evalua-tions after a color change in the entire word, which remained neutral.A possible account for this effect comes from the Stroop Effect literature.In the Stroop task (Stroop, 1935), participants have to name the color inwhich a color word is written. Some color words are presented in theirown color (e.g., RED in red ink) and other color words are presented inan ink incongruent with their meaning (e.g., RED in blue ink). The clas-sical result, known as the Stroop Effect, is that participants are slower innaming the color when it is incongruent with the meaning of the word.This effect has been interpreted as the result of an interference of theirrelevant automatic semantic processing of the word on the relevantcolor processing. Butmore recent studies have demonstrated the reduc-tion and even elimination of the Stroop Effect when a single letter of theword is colored (Besner & Stolz, 1999; Besner, Stolz, & Boutilier, 1997;Manwell, Roberts, & Besner, 2004). One interpretation of this StroopEffect reduction is that the single-letter coloration reduces the windowof spatial attention, focusing the processing on the letter level. Conversely,all-letter coloration draws attention to the word level, activating itssemantic processing. In our results,whenparticipants focused their atten-tion on the letter level (after the color change of only the first or lastletter), they subsequently proved more sensitive to the hedonic markingof the valence scale than when their attention was on the word level(after the entire word changed colors). The semantic processing of theentire word seemed to prevent participants from sensing the affectivecoloration of the scale.

This second experiment helped validate the claim of a combinedeffect of the mapping of the evaluation scale and the fluency ofresponse movements in the emotional evaluation of neutral words. Inorder to complete this study, we decided to replicate our initial effectin a task with different kinds of cues to induce arm movements. First,the signal must not be visual, to completely rule out the question ofvisual attention. Second, it must not be physically lateralized, to preventany kind of visual orientation effect between the signal and the evalua-tion under the influence of arm movement. To do so, we replicatedExperiment 1, but instead of indicating that the movement had to beperformed upon a color change, we specified that the cue wouldbe given orally, by a voice pronouncing the words “right”, “left” and“middle” in both ears. Therefore, the signal was not visual but auditory,

Table 3Average evaluations of neutral words according to Movement made to respond to theauditory detection task and to the Scale design (from 1, negative, to 5, positive).

Scale design Leftwardmovement

Middlemovement

Rightwardmovement

M SD M SD M SD

Congruent 2.94 0.39 2.79 0.37 3.11 0.35Non-congruent 2.84 0.27 3.05 0.26 2.96 0.35M 2.89 2.93 3.03

247A. Milhau et al. / Acta Psychologica 144 (2013) 243–249

and the laterality information was given semantically instead of physi-cally. This oral cue could not visually direct the participant's attention;it only indicated the kind of action that had to be performed. Wehypothesized that the results would follow the same pattern as thosein Experiment 1, specifically that right-handers would evaluate theneutral words positively after a movement to the right and with ascale congruent with their valence/laterality associations (i.e., rightpositive and left negative), and negatively after a movement to the leftwith a scale incongruentwith the usualmapping of valence and laterality.

4. Experiment 3

4.1. Method

4.1.1. ParticipantsThirty-one students from the University of Montpellier took part

in this experiment for extra course credits. The participants includedtwenty-nine women and two men, all right-handed according toself-declaration and aged from 19 to 32 years (M = 21.8 years;SD = 3). They were all native French speakers with a good orcorrected vision. All participants gave their informed consent priorto the experiment.

4.1.2. Material and procedureThe equipment and procedure were the same as in Experiment 1,

except that the signal participants had to detect was not visual butauditory. Participants wore headphones. For each word, after 250 msof presentation of the word, a woman's voice issued directions such as“left”, “right” and “middle” to indicate which key participants shouldpress on the keyboard. This indication was given in both ears simulta-neously. Words stayed on the screen until the participant answered.

4.2. Results

Only data corresponding to correct answers in the auditory cue phasewere preserved (we excluded 0.17% of responses in the evaluation task).The remaining data were analyzed with a mixed ANOVA with the factorMovement (rightward vs. leftward vs. middle) manipulated within par-ticipants and the factor Scale (congruent vs. incongruent) manipulatedbetween participants. Mean evaluations of words for each conditionare exposed in Table 3.

Analysis of mean evaluations revealed a main effect of the factorMovement, F(2,58) = 3.97, p = .02, ηp

2 = .12. Partial analysis showedthat this effect was due to a significantly more positive evaluation fol-lowing a rightward movement than following a leftward movement,F(1,29) = 7.63, p = .01, ηp

2 = .21, and a marginal difference betweenevaluation following a rightward movement and a middle-orientedmovement, with the former implying a more positive evaluation thanthe latter, F(1,29) = 3.44, p = .07, ηp

2 = .11.The effect of the kind of Scale did not reach significance (p = .95)

but the interaction between Scale and Movement did, F(2,58) = 8.82,p = .0004, ηp

2 = .23. When studying each scale separately, analysisrevealed that for the incongruent horizontal scale, only leftward move-ment differed from middle-oriented movement, with more negativeevaluations following left responses, F(1,29) = 10.37, p = .003,ηp

2 = .26. The rightward movement did not differ from the two otherorientations (from leftward movement, p = .12: from middle-orientedmovement, p = .27). For the congruent scale, rightward movementsled to more positive evaluations than leftward movements, F(1,29) =5.17, p = .03, ηp2 = .15 and middle-oriented movements, F(1,29) =13.36, p = .001, ηp2 = .32. Furthermore, and even if no prediction wasmade on the “middle” condition, middle-oriented movements led to amore negative evaluation than leftward movements, F(1,29) = 4.89,p = .04, ηp

2 = .14.Finally, after a middle-oriented movement, evaluations were more

negative with the congruent scale than with the incongruent one,

F(1,29) = 5.28, p = .03, ηp2 = .15. This difference did not reach signif-

icance after a leftward or after a rightward movement (respectivelyp = .44 and p = .25).

4.3. Discussion

The aim of this third experiment was to replicate the effectobtained in the first experiment, but with an auditory semantic signaldetermining the lateral response movement in order to rule out thepossibility of a visual orientation bias. We expected participants tojudge neutral words more positively after a fluent arm movementwhen using a valence scale matching their own valence/lateralityassociations, and more negatively with non-fluent response move-ments and a mismatching evaluative scale.

This time, the type of scale had no main effect on evaluation, butthe interaction of the scale and the movements mirrored the effectsobtained in Experiment 1. Words were evaluated positively after a flu-ent movement in the case of a congruent scale for a right-hander andnegatively after a non-fluent movement with a reversed evaluationscale. In other words, the hypothesis is validated: evenwith an auditorysemantic signal, the combination of movement fluency and congruentevaluation settings led to variations in the emotional evaluations ofneutral words.

This result precludes an interpretation in terms of a visual orientationbias influencing lateralized evaluation. The signal was semantically – notphysically – lateralized; therefore, the only dimension that matched theevaluation scale was the movement and not the external cue. The audi-tory information acted as a prime for the realization of the movement,as did the visual color change in Experiment 1. Surprisingly, we obtainednegative evaluations following a middle-oriented movement when thescale was congruent. This effect is difficult to interpret because it cannotbe attributed solely to the signal or the response and it only occurredin the case of a congruent design of the evaluative scale. Furthermore,the congruent scale was associated with a positive connotation in boththis experiment and previous ones, while middle-oriented signals andresponses did not reveal effects on evaluation, especially not a negativeeffect (note that with the “opposite” scale, the evaluation remainedneutral). Further research is necessary to explain this specific effect.

5. General discussion

This study focuses on the effect of action on emotional evaluation.Our objective was to demonstrate that the experience of emotion isaffected by the dynamics of human functioning through the influenceof motor fluency (Brouillet et al., 2011) and by the presentation ofan evaluative scale matching or mismatching the valence/lateralityassociations identified by the body-specificity hypothesis (Casasanto,2009). In other words, we intended to show that a word usuallyperceived as neutral can be evaluated either positively or negativelydepending on the ongoing activity and on the valence scale.

Our hypothesis was that the performance of fluent or non-fluentlateral actions can induce positive and negative evaluations, respectively,especially when the evaluative scale proposed in the valence judgmenttask respectively matches andmismatches the valence/laterality associa-tions manifested by right-handers (i.e., positive to the right, negative to

248 A. Milhau et al. / Acta Psychologica 144 (2013) 243–249

the left, Casasanto, 2009). In otherwords, we expected right-handed par-ticipants to evaluate neutral words more positively than negatively aftera fluent arm movement (i.e., rightward movement) when the scaleused to evaluate the word was congruent for right-handers (i.e., right aspositive and left as negative), and more negatively than positively aftera non-fluent movement (i.e., leftward movement) when the scale wasincongruent (i.e., right as negative and left as positive).

Our first experiment demonstrated that lateral arm movementsinduced by a visual detection task led to an emotionally-connotedevaluation of neutral stimuli, depending on the evaluative scale design.The combination of fluent rightward movements and congruent scaleled to a positive coloration of neutral items, while non-fluent leftwardactions and incongruent scale caused negative evaluations of neutralwords. To rule out the possibility of an explanation in terms of directionof attention instead of an embodiment account of the effect, a secondexperiment was conducted without lateral responses. The absence ofdifference between the lateral motor responses for each evaluativescale in Experiment 2 showed that the initial effect revealed in thefirst experiment was not due to direction of attention but that thelateral arm movements performed in Experiment 1 were necessary toproduce the predicted pattern of responses. Then, in order to replicateour findings and to exclude another account of our results by a visualorientation bias, we conducted a third experiment in which lateralmovements were not induced by a lateralized visual signal, but by anauditory semantic prime. Results replicated the pattern obtained inExperiment 1, demonstrating that the effect was due to both motor flu-ency and situational features of the evaluative set. However, it must benoted that in this study, as in de la Vega et al.'s (2012) research, partic-ipants were predominantly women (87% of participants across thethree experiments). Since this gender imbalance might compromisethe generalization of the results, the issue of gender differences shouldbe addressed in future validations of the body-specificity hypothesis.

Amajor element of our research is the fact that, in light of the effectsof the valence judgment scales used, these three studies tend to confirmthemapping of valence on lateral space as defined by Casasanto (2009).They also help extend this mapping to valence and lateral arm move-ments, as illustrated by the interactions between the movements ofresponse and the scales. Furthermore, these results support the claimthat action can influence emotional processes thanks to the affectivecharacter of its own feedback, namely its fluency (Reber et al., 1998;Winkielman et al., 2002). In other words, the ease experienced inperforming a specific action provides an emotional dimension to thisbehavior which helps build the emotional experience. Then, when oneis asked to evaluate an item (especially a neutral one), this emotionalexperience tends to emotionally charge the object.

It must be noted that there is no direct link between the lateral armmovements used here and emotion (contrary to the more specific linksthat exist between emotion and motivational behaviors of approachand avoidance for example, see Chen & Bargh, 1999). Therefore, thiskind of emotion/action associations is built on the basis of a lifetime ofinteractions with the environment (Casasanto & Chrysikou, 2011).This work supports the claim of the situated character of cognition(Barsalou, 2008) and specifically of evaluation, since it is the combina-tion of both motor action and scale design relative to valence/lateralityassociations that allowed the variation of evaluation in Experiments 1and 3. Moreover, when the motor dimension of the task was absent(Experiment 2), only the orientation of the evaluative scale seemed tohave influenced the evaluation. To summarize, the evaluative settingsfollowing the usual pattern “right-positive and left-negative” weremarked positively, enabling the matching with the hedonic characterof fluent actions.

One important issue in this study concerns the pattern of results thatmight be obtained with left-handers. Indeed, the congruent scale forright-handers (negative on the left and positive on the right) is thestandard presentation of negative and positive values, as in the mentalrepresentation of the number line (seeDehaene, Bossini, & Giraux, 1993

for literature on the SNARC effect, spatial-numerical association ofresponse codes). Since left-handers manifest the same representationof the number line, we can assume that they would also prefer theright-handers' congruent scale. However, studies supporting the body-specificity hypothesis have demonstrated that left-handers associatepositive with the left and negative with the right (Casasanto, 2009; dela Vega et al., 2012).Wemight therefore expect that, in our Experiment1, left-handers would demonstrate a reversed pattern of results, thatis to say a positive evaluation with a “left positive-right negative” scaleand after a fluent movement directed leftward, and a negative evalua-tion with a “left negative-right positive” scale and after a non-fluentmovement directed rightward. We plan to conduct future experimentsto test those hypotheses.

Finally, this work leads us to address the possibility that emotion,or at least affective evaluation, might be considered a constructive pro-cess. Indeed, since, in our study, the evaluation of neutral words wasinfluenced by online manipulations of behavior, emotion, and in partic-ular the activity of affective evaluation, appears to be a constructedexperience. This result goes against a more classical view of emotionbased on the idea of symbolic representation of objects and concepts.In our view, the emotional character of an object is not a determinedfeature, like a label related to an object (Collins & Loftus, 1975). Onthe contrary, the affective dimension of an object appears during theinteraction with this object. Evaluation is made online and in context: Itis a “right here, right now” judgment. The positive or negative characterof an object is dependent upon the outcome of the present interaction.In otherwords, affective judgments are influenced by the dynamic aspectof cognition: “judgments reflect not only the descriptive factors, or whatcomes to mind, but also how things come to mind” (Winkielman &Cacioppo, 2001, p. 489). Of course, a lifetime of experience will makesome associations between an object and a particular evaluation moresignificant than others (e.g., for an arachnophobic, a spider will be judgednegatively in every situation), but a specific emotional experience will becreatedwith each encounterwith this object, because a different reactionhas to be planned to relate to this object depending on situational con-straints (Barsalou, 2003, 2008).

To conclude, and in support of William James' (1884, 1890) claim,emotion can be considered not as a cause but rather as a consequence ofsituated sensory-motor processes, emerging from a successful (or not)matching between a motor execution related to perception and themeaning assigned to it by past experiences (Barsalou, 2008), bodyspecificities (Casasanto, 2009) and fluency (Winkielman & Cacioppo,2001).

References

Barsalou, L. W. (2003). Situated simulation in the human conceptual system. Language& Cognitive Processes, 18(5–6), 513–562.

Barsalou, L. W. (2008). Grounded cognition. Annual Review of Psychology, 59, 617–645.Beilock, S. L., & Holt, L. E. (2007). Embodied preference judgments: Can likeability be

driven by the motor system? Psychological Science, 18, 51–57.Besner, D., & Stolz, J. A. (1999). What kind of attention modulates the Stroop effect?

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 6, 99–104.Besner, D., Stolz, J. A., & Boutilier, C. (1997). The Stroop effect and the myth of automaticity.

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 4, 221–225.Bonin, P. M., Méot, A., Aubert, L., Malardier, N., Niedenthal, P., & Capelle-Toczek, M. -C.

(2003). Normes de concrétude, de valeur, d'imagerie, de fréquence subjective et devalence émotionnelle pour 867 mots. L'Année Psychologique, 104, 655–694.

Brookshire, G., & Casasanto, D. (2012). Motivation and motor control: Hemisphericspecialization for approach motivation reverses with handedness. PloS One, 7(4),e36036.

Brouillet, T., Ferrier, L. P., Grosselin, A., & Brouillet, D. (2011). Action compatibility effectsare hedonically marked and have incidental consequences on affective judgment.Emotion, 11(5), 1202–1205.

Cannon, P. R., Hayes, A. E., & Tipper, S. P. (2010). Sensorimotor fluency influences affect:Evidence from electromyography. Cognition & Emotion, 24(4), 681–691.

Casasanto, D. (2009). Embodiment of abstract concepts: Good and bad in right- andleft-handers. Journal of Experimental Psychology. General, 138(3), 351–367.

Casasanto, D., & Chrysikou, E. G. (2011). When left is ‘right’: Motor fluency shapesabstract concepts. Psychological Science, 22(4), 419–422.

Casasanto, D., & Jasmin, K. (2010). Good and bad in the hands of politicians; spontaneousgestures during positive and negative speech. PloS One, 5.

249A. Milhau et al. / Acta Psychologica 144 (2013) 243–249

Chen,M., & Bargh, J. (1999). Consequences of automatic evaluation: Immediate behavioralpredispositions to approach or avoid the stimulus. Personality & Social PsychologyBulletin, 25, 215–224.

Collins, A., & Loftus, E. (1975). A spreading activation theory of semantic processing.Psychological Review, 82, 407–428.

de la Vega, I., de Filippis, M., Lachmair, M., Dudschig, C., & Kaup, B. (2012). Emotionalvalence and physical space: Limits of interaction. Journal of Experimental Psychology.Human Perception and Performance, 38(2), 375–385.

Dehaene, S., Bossini, S., & Giraux, P. (1993). The mental representation of parityand number magnitude. Journal of Experimental Psychology. General, 122,371–396.

Elliott, D., Roy, E. A., Goodman, D., Carson, R. G., Chua, R., & Maraj, B. K. V. (1993).Asymmetries in the preparation and control of manual aiming movements. CanadianJournal of Experimental Psychology, 47(3), 570–589.

Fisk, J. D., & Goodale, M. A. (1985). The organization of eye and limb movements duringunrestricted reaching to targets in ipsilateral and contralateral space. ExperimentalBrain Research, 60, 159–178.

Glenberg, A. M. (1997). What memory is for. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 20, 1–55.Hodges, N. J., Lyons, J., Cockell, D., Reed, A., & Elliott, D. (1997). Hand, space and attentional

asymmetries in goal-directed manual aiming. Cortex, 33(2), 251–269.James, W. (1884). What is an emotion? Mind, 9, 188–205.James, W. (1890). The principles of psychology, Vol. 2, New York: Dover Publications.Kong, F. (2013). Space–valence associations depend on handedness: Evidence

from a bimanual output task. Psychological Research. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00426-012-0471-7.

Manwell, L. A., Roberts, M. A., & Besner, D. (2004). Single letter coloring and spatialcuing eliminates a semantic contribution to the Stroop effect. Psychonomic Bulletin& Review, 11(3), 458–462.

Ping, R. M., Dhillon, S., & Beilock, S. L. (2009). Reach for what you like: The body's rolein shaping preferences. Emotion Review, 1, 140–150.

Posner, M. I., & Cohen, Y. (1984). Components of visual orienting. In H. Bouma, & G. G.Bouwhuis (Eds.), Attention and performance X (pp. 531–556). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Reber, R., Winkielman, P., & Schwarz, N. (1998). Effects of perceptual fluency on affectivejudgments. Psychological Science, 9, 45–48.

Stroop, J. R. (1935). Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions. Journal of ExperimentalPsychology, 18, 643–662.

Syssau, A., & Font, N. (2005). Evaluations des caractéristiques émotionnelles d'uncorpus de 604 mots. Bulletin de Psychologie, 58, 361–367.

Willems, R. M., Hagoort, P., & Casasanto, D. (2010). Body-specific representations of actionverbs: Neural evidence from right- and left-handers. Psychological Science, 21, 67–74.

Winkielman, P., & Cacioppo, T. (2001). Mind at ease puts a smile on the face:Psychophysiological evidence that processing facilitation increases positiveaffect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 989–1000.

Winkielman, P., Schwarz, N., & Nowak, A. (2002). Affect and processing dynamics:Perceptual fluency enhances evaluations. In S. C. Moore, & M. Oaksford (Eds.),Advances in consciousness research, Vol. 44. (pp. 111–135)Amsterdam, Netherlands:John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Zwaan, R. A. (2004). The immersed experiencer: Toward an embodied theory of languagecomprehension. In B. H. Ross (Ed.), Psychology of learning and motivation, Vol. 44.(pp. 35–62)San Diego, CA: Academic Press.