The Body in Religion: The Spatial Mapping of Valence in Tibetan Practitioners of Bön

Abstract

According to the Body-Specificity Hypothesis (BSH), people implicitly associate positive ideas with the side of space on which they are able to act more fluently with their dominant hand. Though this hypothesis has been rigorously tested across a variety of populations and tasks, the studies thus far have only been conducted in linguistic and cultural communities which favor the right over the left. Here, we tested the effect of handedness on implicit space-valence mappings in Tibetan practitioners of Bön who show a strong religious preference for the left, in comparison to an English group. Results showed that Bön right-handers tended to implicitly associate positive valence more strongly with their dominant side of space despite strong explicit associations between the left and goodness in their religion. This pattern of results found in Bön participants was indistinguishable from that found in English speakers. The findings of the present study support the BSH, demonstrating that space-valence mappings in people's minds are shaped by their bodily experience, which appears to be independent of space-valence mappings enshrined in cultural conventions.