Jiska Eelen

Embodiment of cognition and emotion

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 applicability of embodiment theory to understanding and perhaps helping to ameliorate impairments of social functioning, using autism and depression as two illustrative examples. We conclude with the suggestion that a fully fleshed-out embodied account of information processing is still a work in progress. It may in fact be the case that the embodiment perspective cannot satisfactorily account for some important aspect of cognition and emotion. Still, the embodiment perspective has proved remarkably generative in terms of both producing new findings and explaining major phenomena and is likely to continue being a major force in psychology in general and social psychology in particular.

Creative Media Use Increases Online Sharing of Your Ad (but Seems Less Effective for Your Brand)

When you order a drink at your local juice bar, you notice that the flexing part of the straw has a picture of a woman who is holding her hands up. As you flex the straw, the woman bends backwards. This is a clever ad for a yoga center that also presents the link to its website. To what extent do consumers talk about such creative advertising? And what do they say about it? Do they mention the brand name, or focus only on the clever execution? Research has shown that creative media advertising, of which the drinking straw is an example, may have a positive effect on consumers’ attitudes and brand recall (Dahlen et al. 2009). But do creative media also lead to an increase in word of mouth? And to what extent is this word of mouth linked to the brand itself?

Consumer Responses to Creative Media Advertising: A Literature Review

Originality/value By reviewing all the literature about creative media advertising, the authors make recommendations for future research and for using creative media in practice. They emphasize potential boundary conditions and ideal circumstances of using creative media advertising.