magazine issue 4 2014 / Issue 20

Word of mouth: How our tongue shapes our preferences, and why you should eat popcorn in the cinema

• written by Sascha Topolinski
• edited by Spike Lee

On being immune to such branding and name-dropping in marketing, one group of people might have an advantage from their handicap, namely illiterates or patients with aphasia (a disturbance of language comprehension and speaking due to brain dysfunctions). It is quite likely that people who cannot read or are impaired on language more generally are not affected by word repetition, although an empirical test of this speculation is still pending.

More generally, this research shows how important our body is for acquiring memory and make sense of our environment. Our mind is no dry collection of abstract concepts and features, but a rich bulk of sensory and motor representations that constitute knowledge, memory, and feelings. Beyond the current effects on liking of neutral words, psychological research has shown that the body plays a major role in phenomena as diverse as social relations (e.g., IJzerman, & Semin, 2009; Schubert, Schubert, & Topolinski, 2013; Sparenberg, Topolinski, Springer, & Prinz, 2012), interpersonal trust (Lee & Schwarz, 2012), experiencing time (Boroditsky & Ramscar, 2002), or aesthics in arts (Leder, Bär, & Topolinski, 2013).

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