Barking up the wrong tree

Four studies show that the abstract concept of importance is grounded in bodily experiences of weight. Participants provided judgments of importance while they held either a heavy or a light clipboard. Holding a heavy clipboard increased judgments of monetary value (Study 1) and made participants consider fair decision-making procedures to be more important (Study 2). It also caused more elaborate thinking, as indicated by higher consistency between related judgments (Study 3) and by greater polarization of agreement ratings for strong versus weak arguments (Study 4). In line with an embodied perspective on cognition, these findings suggest that, much as weight makes people invest more physical effort in dealing with concrete objects, it also makes people invest more cognitive effort in dealing with abstract issues.

Source: "Weight as an Embodiment of Importance" from Psychological Science, Volume 20 Issue 9, Pages 1169 - 1174

I'm imagining adding metal weights strategically to different things in my life... This whole embodied cognition perspective shines even greater light on the importance of context. Reading these studies you can't help but wonder how much of what goes on is really driven by our environment vs what is between our ears. Does the idea that you are not really in control scare you? How subject to the whims of context do you feel?

Here's a "heavy" video game -- considered one of the most groundbreaking in a while.

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