In the years since they first proposed the idea of embodied cognition, experimental psychologists have offered tantalizing evidence that Lakoff and Johnson might be right.32 In one experiment, people who held a warm coffee cup were more likely to judge another person as trustworthy. Thus, “warming up” to someone didn’t seem to be just an abstract metaphor. Because that metaphor dwelled somewhere in our brains, it could be hacked: Being physically warmed could change our emotional judgments. Other studies provided similar evidence for much different metaphors: Participants in one experiment,
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