A Tutorial towards Theory Formalization in (Social) Embodiment

Embodied – or grounded - cognition frameworks assume that human thought is affected by inputs from the bodily modalities and the environment and emerged in response to amodal approaches. But the embodied cognition literature, generally speaking, lacks the formal theorizing that allows for specific predictions about relations between body and mind. This problem is amplified by the fact that psychological research has encountered replication problems, challenges to validity of measures and manipulations, and overgeneralization of obtained findings to populations and measures that were not tested. This chapter provides a tutorial on how the field can move towards formalized theories of embodied social cognition. We rely on research on social thermoregulation – the idea that social behaviors protect the body’s core temperature – as a template for this. The chapter addresses the important questions of how to separate noise from signal in embodiment research, how to create reliable and valid measures, and how to appropriately draw conclusions about the generalizability of obtained findings. We hope that following these recommendations will help theories in embodiment to become more formal, allowing for precise predictions about interactions between the body and human (social) cognition.