Mellow Monday and Furious Friday: The Approach-Related Link Between Anger and Time Representation

Roles

David J. Hauser: Class of 2008

Margaret S. Carter: Class of 2009

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2009

Department 1

Psychology

Abstract

Time can be represented spatially in two prevalent metaphors; ego-moving has the self moving ‘‘forward’’ towards the future while time-moving has the future moving ‘‘forward’’ towards the self. Anger also is represented spatially by an approachrelated motivation. Because time and anger share an approach-related spatial representation, we hypothesised a link between anger and the ego-moving time perspective. In Study 1, participants naturally adopting an ego-moving representation of time had higher trait anger than those adopting a time-moving representation. Study 2 showed that processing an angry event (vs. an emotionally neutral event) predicted more ego-moving spatial interpretations of time. In Study 3, a scheduling task priming ego-moving (vs. time-moving) time representation prompted higher state anger. Our results reveal a novel bi-directional link between the seemingly unrelated but similarly embodied abstract domains of anger and time.

Comments

Original version is available from the publisher at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02699930802358424#.Ut0rnNIo7cs

DOI

10.1080/02699930802358424

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