The future is in your right hand: An embodied temporal concept

Abstract

Previous studies demonstrated that participants in left-to-right writing cultures showed a strong preference to associate the past with left space and the future with right space. The present studies investigated whether these spatial associations involved body-part-centered or extracorporal space. In Experiment 1, participants categorized words as referring to the past or the future by pressing button on the left with the left hand or a button on the right with the right hand. In Experiments 2 and 3, participants crossed their hands and were instructed to categorize words by pressing the left or right buttons (Experiment 2) or by moving their left or right hand (Experiment 3). Irrespective of the relative spatial positions of the response buttons, past words were more quickly categorized with the left hand and future words with the right hand. In addition, reaction times were slower in Experiment 2 than in Experiment 1, whereas there was no significant difference between Experiments 1 and 3. These results suggest that temporal concepts such as past and future are more strongly associated with embodied space than visual space.