Currently
I am reading I Is
an Other: The Secret Life of Metaphor and How it Shapes the Way You See the
World by James Geary. If you are a
language nerd then you may like this book.
If you have a PhD in linguistics then this book may be too simple for
you. If you do not completely love the
show “A Way with Words” then this
book might be a bit boring for you.
However,
there are a number of studies in this book that are quite fantastic and this
post is the first of a couple of posts on this particular study on how we embody
time. Here is the study, and you can
play along.
“Participants
looked at a drawing of a chair with a rope attached to it. Half of the subjects
imagined pulling the chair toward themselves with the rope; the other half
imagined sitting in the chair and pulling themselves forward along the rope.”
(If you
are playing along, go ahead and pick one of the groups and imagine accordingly).
“Both
groups then read the statement “Next Wednesday’s meeting has been moved forward
two days” and were asked: What day is the meeting that has been rescheduled?”
(If you are still playing along, write down
your answer.)
“The
answer to the question “What day is the meeting that has been rescheduled?” is
not obvious, because the concept of “forward” in the context of “the future” is
ambiguous. When the meeting is rescheduled, does it move closer to you or do
you move closer to it?”
If you imagined pulling the chair towards
yourself in the illustration then…
“Participants
who imagined pulling the chair toward themselves more often reported that the
meeting had been moved to Monday, consistent with the metaphorical concept that
time moves events toward them.”
If you imagined pulling yourself forward along
the rope…
“Participants
who imagined pulling themselves along the rope more often reported that the
meeting had been rescheduled to Friday, consistent with the concept that an
event is a stationary object toward which time moves them.”
Did
this match up with you? If you imagined
pulling the chair toward you did you answer Monday? If you imagined pulling yourself along the
rope did you answer Friday?
The
next post will elaborate a bit more on this idea, but wanted to open this up
with you to ponder this question – how is it that imagining a simple action
have an impact on the way we understand time?