If you can't grab it, it won't grab you: The effect of restricting the dominant hand on target evaluations

a r t i c l e i n f o This research examines whether and how holding one object influences evaluations of another. Across four studies, we find that occupying the dominant (vs. non-dominant) hand leads to lower evaluations of the target object; further, process data suggests that this effect occurs because dominant hand restriction impairs the ease with which the perceiver simulates holding the target. Boundary conditions that document effect attenuation and reversal are also consistent with this premise. Collectively, the studies offer support for a circular chain of influence between the perception and action systems. Introduction Consider the following scenarios: a) you are at a party, holding a drink, when the hosts ask for your opinion of a small artifact that they have recently bought, and which is lying in front of you; b) you are at the cereal aisle in the supermarket, a shopping bag in hand, trying to decide which brand of cereal to buy; c) you are using the remote control to change channels on the TV, when your child walks in holding a crafts project she has just completed, demanding to know what you think of it. All three scenarios feature a common theme: being asked to evaluate a target object while holding another object in one's hand. The question this research seeks to answer is: does liking of the target object change simply because one's hand is occupied, and does it matter whether the hand in question is the dominant or non-dominant one? We argue in the affirmative to both questions. Specifically, we make the case that having the dominant hand occupied inhibits one from forming a mental image of reaching out and holding the target, leading to lower evaluations. We arrive at this thesis by integrating three different premises arising from recent theoretical perspectives that postulate a strong association between perceptual, motor and cognitive systems, the first premise states that mere perception of a target object can spontaneously cause the perceiver to form a mental representation of how s/he might act upon the object — even without the action itself taking place. For instance, seeing a knife can spontaneously activate a mental representation of reaching out and holding it by the hilt; similarly , seeing the picture of a cup can induce a mental simulation of curling one's fingers around its handle (Glenberg, 1997; Tucker & Ellis, 1998). The second core …