de la Fuente, J. M. 1 , Casasanto, D. 2 , Román, A. 1 , El Fathi, A. 3 & Santiago, J. 1
1 Dept. de Psicología Experimental y Fisiología del Comportamiento, Universidad de Granada, Spain.
2 Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, The Netherlands.
3 Faculté des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines, Université Abdelmalek Essaadi, Morocco.
In linguistic and cultural expressions all over the world, the right hand is conventionally associated with positive emotional valence and the left hand with negative valence (e.g., “my right hand man”). In spite of these conventions, Casasanto (2009) found that left-handers implicitly associate good with left and bad with right, providing evidence that motor experiences can shape mental metaphors linking concrete and abstract concepts.
Interestingly, Casasanto (2009) found no traces of linguistic and cultural influences on this association: the good-right association was as strong in right-handers as the left-good association in left-handers. The present study tests whether cultural and linguistic conventions can influence body-specific mental metaphors for emotional valence by looking at a cultural group with much stronger left-hand taboos: Arabs.
We first succesfully replicated Casasanto's study with Spanish speakers. We then tested a group of Arabs living in Spain and a group of Moroccans living in Morocco. In either group, it was nearly impossible to find left-handers. Moreover, results showed that Arabs have a much more explicit awareness of the “right is good” association. However, even in the face of these cues to a much stronger cultural influence favouring the right hand, Arab right-handers did not show a stronger association than Spanish right-handers. So far, available data suggest that the association between right and left space and the concepts of good and bad is not modulated by language or culture.
References:
Casasanto, D. (2009) Embodiment of abstract concepts: Good and bad in right- and left-handers. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 138, 351-367.