The replication crisis is killing theory of how the body influences the mind

The replication crisis is killing psychologists’ theory of how the body influences the mind

Olivia Goldhill

While psychologists still disagree over a precise definition, the replication crisis has shown that some of the most famous findings that fall within embodied cognition simply don’t hold up. Studies on the benefit of “power poses,” which claimed that standing with your hands on your hips or sitting with your feet propped up on the desk can increase your confidence, have failed to replicate.  A famous study which showed that people find cartoons funnier when they’re required to smile while watching—which suggest that expressions can generate emotional states rather than simply reflecting them—also cannot be recreated. Similarly, a study claiming that exposure to age-related words made participants walk more slowly, and another famous finding which showed physical cleaning removes feelings of guilt (the so-called “Macbeth effect”), both have failed replication attempts. And, just this month, researchers found they couldn’t recreate a previous finding that holding a warm cup makes creates a sense of interpersonal warmth. These studies cover a wide range of topics, but they all broadly relate to the idea that our bodily actions and sensations influence thought processes that we typically think of as entirely mental.

There’s an instinctive appeal to the notion that our body shapes all thoughts. We are composed of both body and mind, and of course it’s impossible to separate the two. So far, though, psychologists have struggled to come up with a coherent theory with a compelling collection of evidence that shows how the body shapes mental processes, and as the replication crisis tears down finding after finding, it’s time to revisit the theory behind the evidence. Our thoughts may well be shaped by our bodies, but psychologists still haven’t figured out how.