European Journal of Social Psychology

Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 39, 1255–1256 (2009)

Published online in Wiley InterScience

(www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.692

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Embodied social cognition: Bodies, emotions, and blackberries

Correspondence to: Michael P. Kaschak, Depa-mail: kaschak@psy.fsu.edu

opyright # 2009 John Wiley & Son

MICHAEL P. KASCHAK*, JON K. MANER,SAUL MILLER AND JACQUELINE M. COYLEDepartment of Psychology, Florida State University, USA

Shiota and Kenrick (2009) and Sedikides and Skowronski (2009) provided enlightening responses to our embodied

evolutionary framework. As both sets of authors argue, a full understanding of cognition requires an understanding of how

evolutionary forces (such as the pressures associated with group living) have shaped behavior across time. An embodied

approach to social cognition contributes to this understanding by laying the groundwork for identifying basic

cognitive mechanisms that developed in the service of solving adaptive social challenges. Here, we elaborate on three

points: (1) Emotion (and motivation) are key components of an evolved, embodied psychology; (2) disembodied social

interaction grows out of embodied cognition; (3) one challenge for studies of embodiment is to put the ‘‘social’’ back into

social cognition.

EMOTION, MOTIVATION, AND SOCIAL COGNITION: THREE SIDES OF THE SAME COIN

We resonated with Shiota and Kenrick when they wrote that, like musicals, many social circumstances ‘‘make us feel, not

think.’’ Undoubtedly, people do both, and so one goal of an embodied approach is to understand how emotion and

cognition work together. It is clear that emotion, cognition, and motivation all work in concert to help people solve

important adaptive challenges. A pang of jealousy, a flash of pride, or a twinge of disgust, can cause an abrupt re-

organization of the cognitive system to help one respond to important threats or opportunities (Oatley & Johnson-Laird,

1987). Emotions not only alert the perceiver to a possible threat or opportunity; they also attune people to goal-relevant

affordances, and provide the energy for action.

The dynamic links between emotion, motivation, and action are embodied deeply within the cognitive system, and

grounded firmly in the organism’s basic sensory motor systems. These links are constrained by evolutionary factors—the

specific emotions, goals, and actions likely to be embodied are precisely those that have been relevant to solving important

adaptive problems throughout evolutionary history. Hence, at the center of an embodied view of the evolved social mind

resides not just the capacity for reason, but the capacity for passion as well.

DISEMBODIED SOCIAL INTERACTIONS

In many ways, social interaction in industrialized societies is much more ‘‘disembodied’’ than was the case throughout the

vast majority of our evolutionary history. The proliferation of electronic media (email, twitter, facebook, etc.) has removed

rtment of Psychology, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306, USA.

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1256 Michael P. Kaschak et al.

much of the richness inherent in face-to-face communication (e.g., prosody, gesture, body language). To take up Shiota

and Kenrick’s metaphor, disembodied social interaction is successful (and, in many cases, enjoyable) because it involves

more than lyrics—it provides the score needed to understand and simulate one another’s emotions and intentions. Clark

(1996) notes that conversation is the primary seat of language use, and that all other uses of language are parasitic on the

skill we initially developed as conversationalists. Our ancestors faced a challenge when developing orthographic systems,

in that they needed to produce a written form that allowed people to make use of their conversational skills when reading.

This was done in part by developing conventions of punctuation, changes in font (such as italics), and other such devices to

allow the reader to use their ‘‘inner voice’’ to simulate what the language would sound like if spoken. Although electronic

media such as text messaging is relatively new, the use of emoticons and similar conventions suggests that this sort of

communication is undergoing a similar evolution. Disembodied communication remains grounded within embodied

cognition. As such, the most effective means of communication are likely to be those that maintain some of the strategies

that define the richness of face-to-face interaction: Non-verbal behavior, emotion, and proper pacing. Our bodies are built

to efficiently detect and respond to those elements of social interaction, and we suspect that even the most disembodied

forms of technologically based communication will nonetheless continue to co-opt those elements.

THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN SELF-COGNITION AND SOCIAL COGNITION

Shiota and Kenrick (2009) point out an important limitation suffered by many empirical studies of embodied cognition,

particularly with respect to social cognition—most of the extant literature focuses on the simple behavior of individuals,

rather than the exponentially more complex behavior of dyads or social groups. Still, the past few years have witnessed an

increasing number of studies that explore dynamic aspects of behavior in joint activities (see Sebanz, Bekkering, &

Knoblich, 2006, for examples). The paradigms reported in this literature are still somewhat impoverished from a social

perspective, but the success of these projects foreshadows future studies in which cognitive processes are understood and

studied within their natural social contexts.

Many cognitive faculties, including the way we think about the self, are designed ultimately to foster successful social

behavior. As Sedikides and Skowronski aptly put it, ‘‘social cognition and self-cognition are two sides of the same coin.’’

Our hope is that an embodied evolutionary approach will provide a theoretical springboard from which to understand self-

cognition, social cognition, and their points of intersection.

REFERENCES

Clark, H. H. (1996). Using language. London: Cambridge University Press.Oatley, K., & Johnson-Laird, P. N. (1987). Towards a cognitive theory of emotions. Cognition and Emotion, 1, 29–50.Sebanz, N., Bekkering, H., & Knoblich, G. (2006). Joint action: Bodies and minds moving together. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10,

70–76.Sedikides, C., & Skowronski, J. J. (2009). Social cognition and self-cognition: Two sides of the same evolutionary coin? EuropeanJournal of Social Psychology, 39, 1245–1249. DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.690

Shiota, M. N., & Kenrick, D. T. (2009). Music, lyrics, and dangerous things. European Journal of Social Psychology, 39, 1250–1254.DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.691

Copyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 39, 1255–1256 (2009)

DOI: 10.1002/ejsp