关键词: 具身认知, 概念隐喻, 温度隐喻, 心灵鸡汤

Abstract: Chicken soup for the soul are book series which consist of inspirational true stories about people's lives. “Chicken soup for the soul” has now become one of the world’s best-known phrases and it refers to inspirational and warm hearting stories. The embodied cognition theory considered that cognitive processes might closely linked with physical sense perception. Conceptual metaphor theory assumed that the sensorimotor information should be an integral part for representing abstract concepts and the sensorimotor experiences could be activated by the abstract conceptual processing. Past researches have proved that temperature perceptions interacted with interpersonal emotions, that is, one’s physical warmth would cause positive evaluation of others and his or her interpersonal warmth would produce the perception of physical warmth. However, these researches were based on real self interpersonal perception. No research has been conducted to explore whether the abstract interpersonal description of others will influence the perception of physical temperature. Based on the embodied cognition theory and the conceptual metaphor theory, three experiments were conducted to test whether chicken soup for the soul could work as a warm reading material to affect temperature perception, interpersonal evaluation and self evaluation. In Experiment 1, 132 undergraduates were divide into two groups to read two kinds of reading materials, one of which were chicken soup for the soul stories, the other were business reports. After reading the given materials, the participants were asked to estimate the indoor temperature. In Experiment 2, after reading the soul storie or business reports, participants were asked to evaluate how the staff ’s personality on scales who handed out the reading materials. In Experiment 3, after reading the given materials, 90 undergraduates were asked to evaluate their own personliaty on scales. The results showed: (1) Chicken soup for the soul stories helped the participants produce a warm perceptual experience. The participants reading the Chicken soup for the soul stories estimated higher indoor temperature than those reading business reports ( group of chicken soup for the soul stories: M =15.076, SD=5.269; group of business reports: M=12.455, SD= 4.069; t=3.199, p=0.002, d=0.561). (2) The participants reading chicken soup for the soul stories thought more highly of the working staff. They tended to think the staff were warm and active. Warm feeling after reading the stories elicited positive evaluation of others. (3) Different reading materials didn’t elicit difference in self assessment. The research has proved that chicken soup for the soul stories can be used to understand the thermal metaphor, and participants tend to evaluate others in agreement with the thermal metaphor. The result of the research has indicated that besides real-life warm interpersonal perception, abstract interpersonal description could have an effect on the perception of physical warmth and influence real-life interpersonal evaluation. It has also proved that sometimes the understanding of concrete concepts is based on sensory-motor process, but after reading warm materials, there was no change on self assessment. Thermal metaphor seemed has no effect on self evaluation. In this way, understanding of familiar concrete concepts maybe not based on sensory-motor process.

Key words: embodied cognition, conceptual metaphor, thermal metaphor, chicken soup for the soul