The Dark Side of Interpersonal Touch: Physical Contact Leads to More Non-compliance With Preventive Measures to COVID-19

Abstract

Following preventive measures is crucial for slowing the rate of COVID-19 spread. To date, most research has focused on the role of individual differences and personality in compliance with preventive measures to COVID-19. Building on findings that interpersonal touch instills a feeling of security, we propose that interpersonal touching behavior, an underexplored factor tied to social interaction, leads to more breaches of coronavirus restrictions by inducing security feelings. In a lab experiment (Experiment 1) and a field study (Experiment 2), we demonstrated that a female experimenter’s fleeting and comforting pat on the shoulder made people less willing to abide by preventive measures in their self-report and actual behavior. Further, we excluded a potential alternative explanation that touch intervention by the experimenter presents the defiance of COVID-19 rules because the effect cannot be observed when the touch consists of a handshake rather than a comforting pat on the shoulder (Experiment 3). Finally, consistent with our theoretical perspective, the results revealed that sense of security mediated the effect of interpersonal touch on violation of instructions to follow coronavirus precautions. Taken together, interpersonal touch not only enhances trust and security, but also can push people away from health guidelines.

Keywords

Interpersonal touch social distancing preventive measures COVID-19 physical contact health decisions

Introduction

The coronavirus COVID-19 global pandemic is continuing its spread across the world and poses a significant global health threat. Though drug administration in multiple countries has granted emergency authorization to vaccines, the COVID-19 vaccine still faces numerous potential roadblocks such as scaling up manufacturing operations and distribution (Mahase, 2020). Before reaching herd immunity, following public health guidelines such as practicing social distancing, washing hands, and wearing masks is one of the most effective ways to thwart the spread of the highly contagious disease (Lewnard & Lo, 2020).

An emerging body of research has begun to identify a class of nudges that motivate people to abide by preventive measures such as performing social and physical distancing. For instance, in one study conducted by Sheetal et al. (2020), participants were primed with optimistic scenarios (e.g., vaccines are developed and authorized soon) or with pessimistic scenarios (e.g., vaccines are not developed in the timeline predicted) before rating the ethicality of five scenes related to the COVID-19 situation. The results showed that participants in the optimist sessions were less willing to justify unethical behavior related to violating health guidelines than participants in the pessimistic sessions. This is possibly because optimistic individuals believe that good things are very likely to happen and thus there is no need to take part in unethical behavior to obtain positive results. Pfattheicher et al. (2020) also found that inducing empathy for people clinically extremely vulnerable to the virus promoted the motivation to follow coronavirus precautions such as social distancing and mask wearing. Overall, such findings suggest that several nudge interventions can be used to increase people’s willingness to comply with preventive measures to COVID-19.

Despite the aforementioned research providing important insights into helpful tools that can improve health decision to flatten the COVID-19 curve, a burgeoning empirical literature has emerged to identify psychological and social factors that are associated with more violations of coronavirus restrictions (Aschwanden et al., 2020; Lammers et al., 2020; H. Li, 2021; Oosterhoff et al., 2020). For instance, some studies suggest that individuals displaying a higher level of the Dark Triad personalities were less prone to adhering to social-distancing guidelines (Nowak et al., 2020). Yet, many key questions remain unanswered. In particular, it is still unclear what factors tied to social interaction influence people’s breaches of coronavirus restrictions. To fill this gap in knowledge, the present research examined a new idea that interpersonal tactile communication—even a subtle and gentle touch on the back of the shoulder—engenders feelings of security and thereby leads to more non-compliance with COVID-19 preventive measures.

The ubiquity of interpersonal touch has spurred a substantial body of research on its social and cognitive consequences (Gallace & Spence, 2010; Hall, 1969; Hertenstein et al., 2006). One well-established finding is that interpersonal touch can increase the strength of attachment and instill a feeling of security (Ainsworth et al., 1978; Williams & Bargh, 2008). According to the embodied cognition hypothesis, certain forms of physical contact may reactivate the caregiving experience and bodily state that have co-occurred with the feelings of security originally evoked by physical contact in mother–child interactions (Niedenthal, 2007). Thus, the interconnection between interpersonal touch and feeling of security and safety emerges at birth. The positive effect of interpersonal touch can also be observed in adult populations across a diversity of contexts (Burgoon et al., 1992). A wealth of research has shown that even a fleeting touch by a female experimenter or touching a teddy bear can create a psychologically safe environment (Levav & Argo, 2010) and minimize the impact of social exclusion among adults (Tai et al., 2011). Experiments also indicate that tactile touch exerts an influence on compliance with a request made by the “toucher” (Dolinski, 2010; Guéguen & Fischer-Lokou, 2002). For instance, Guéguen et al. (2007) found that employees in the restaurant can receive higher tips and more positive evaluations when they slightly touched on the forearm of the patron compared to those who did not touch the customer.

Despite these empirical studies suggesting that interpersonal touch resulting in positive psychological responses among children and adults, virtually all of them have focused on deep and safe interaction such as mother–child bonding and customer relationship. One stream of research on physical contact is the work on the consequences of nonverbal behaviors of expressing social affiliation and affection in a highly threatened environment. For example, in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study involving 16 highly satisfied married couples, Coan et al. (2006) found that when confronted with the threat of electric shock, women with spouse and stranger hands-holding attended less to neural threat responses associated with the social regulation of emotional responding than women without any hand-holding. This effect was especially prominent in spouse hand-holding condition and in highly satisfied married couples. These findings suggest that nonverbal soothing can help people ignore the real health threat for human physical interaction and feel safe in a seemingly dangerous environment.¹ The current investigation, however, casts caution on the widespread approbation of interpersonal touch and reveals one of its dark sides in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

One unexplored yet important possibility is that the feeling of security evoked by physical contact may cause people to engage in unethical behavior such as not wearing face mask and breaching social distancing restrictions in the current pandemic. According to risk compensation theory, people optimize and adjust their behaviors when they are in the face with different levels of environmental stresses (Maxin et al., 2016; Wilde, 1982, 1989). On the one hand, individuals will become cautious with their act in high-risk and unpredictable situations such as economic volatility, political uncertainty, and pandemic disruption. For instance, Chang and Sivam (2004) found that defensive pessimism such as preparedness for any situations and vigilance in a time of crisis was positively related to preventive health-related behaviors in coping with SARS. On the other hand, risk compensation also denotes that people are more likely to engage in reckless, risky, and thrill-seeking behaviors when they are in a low-risk environment. For example, Levav and Argo (2010) provided evidence that a fleeting touch by a female experimenter can increase feeling of security, which in turn leads individuals to engage in risky financial behavior.

Applying this logic to the domain of health decisions, the safer environment individuals are exposed to, the more likely they are to think that preventive measures to the COVID-19 are unnecessary since they do not need any virus protection. As a result, interpersonal touch may shape people to feel safer during the coronavirus pandemic, and thus more apt to engage in unethical behavior related to health guidelines. In light of the above reasoning, we predict that interpersonal touch can increase people’s non-compliance with preventive measures to COVID-19 by making participants perceive a false sense of security. To test these possibilities, we conducted a lab experiment and two field studies by employing student and non-student samples.

First, we sought to establish a causal link between interpersonal touch and people’s willingness to practice strict social distancing. Second, we propose and test sense of security as the psychological mechanism that underlies the relationship between interpersonal touch and non-compliance with preventive measures. There is evidence that the sense of security plays a mediating role in the effect of interpersonal touch on risk-taking behavior (Levav & Argo, 2010). Such findings suggest that feeling of security contributes to the social and cognitive consequences of physical contact. Drawing on the psychology literature, we theorize that sense of security is a mediating mechanism. Finally, we contrasted the effects of a touch on the shoulder and a handshake to exclude the explanation that physical contact may model and send a message to participants that there is no need to follow preventive measures surrounding COVID-19. Throughout the paper, we selected a light pat on the back of the shoulder by a female as the prime since it is a typical form of maternal touch during natural caregiving and can reliably evoke feelings of support and security as numerous published studies have shown (Burgoon, 1991; Burgoon et al., 1992; Dewever, 1977).

Experiment 1

Method

Participants

The study took place in November 2020. The local government reported a total of 576 confirmed cases of COVID-19 with six deaths. There were no newly reported cases and no death within the last 14 consecutive days during the experimental session. A total of 154 university students (53.0% female; Mean age = 19.4, SD = 1.2) participated in our study. In exchange for participation, respondents received a monetary reward (8 RMB). Participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions and completed the survey individually.

Materials and Procedure

Upon arrival, participants were greeted and escorted by a female experimenter into the experimental room where they seated at a table. The protocol for manipulating touch in our study closely followed previous research regarding the effect of interpersonal research on human behavior (Koole et al., 2014; Levav & Argo, 2010). In the touch condition, when implementing the verbal instruction, the female experimenter, who was blind to the true purpose of the study, administered a brief unobtrusive touch by lightly placing her hand on the participants’ shoulder blade for approximately 1–2 s. In the control condition, there was not any form of physical contact in the implementation of verbal instruction. To ensure that the same manipulation was delivered equally effectively, we used the same experimenter with all the participants. After the independent variable manipulation was completed, the experimenter closed the door and left the room to assume her position behind a one-way window.

Subsequently, participants completed a pen-and-pencil questionnaire which was used to measure their social distancing. Participants responded to five items on a five-point scale (α = .81) ranging from 1 = very unlikely to 5 = very likely, modeled after Pfattheicher et al. (2020). Sample items include “In coming days, I will visit elderly people (e.g., parents, grandparents, elderly friends) during my leisure time” and “In the coming days, I will likely be at places where other people will also be during my leisure time.” Higher scores are associated with more defiance of COVID-19 rules. Following this, participants responded to six measures which were utilized to gauge their sense of security (α = .87), which modeled after Levav and Argo (2010). Specifically, they were asked to indicate their current feeling of “at ease,” “secure,” “protected,” “safe,” “comfortable,” and “accepted” on a seven-point scale ranging from 1 = not at all to 7 = very. Composite scores were created by mean-computing all item scores. Finally, participants were debriefed about the true nature of the experiment and were thanked for their participation.

Results and Discussion

Debriefing responses indicated that no participants correctly guessed the link between different sessions. As we expected, participants who were touched on their shoulder were less willing to comply with social distancing measures (M = 3.79, SD = 0.70) than participants who were not touched (M = 3.42, SD = 0.89), t (152) = 2.94, p = .004, Cohen’s d = 0.44, 95% CI = [0.1151, 0.6249]. Moreover, participants in the touch condition reported a higher level of security (M = 4.71, SD = 0.79) than those in the control condition (M = 4.29, SD = 0.99), t (152) = 2.86, p = .004, Cohen’s d = 0.47, 95% CI = [0.1348, 0.7052] (Table 1). To examine whether sense of security mediated the effect of interpersonal touch on compliance with social distancing practices, we conducted a bootstrapping analysis (Preacher & Hayes, 2008). This analysis revealed that feeling of security played a mediating role in the relationship between physical contact and social distancing, yielding a 95% confidence interval of −0.4545–−0.0895, which does not include zero.

Table 1.

Summary of Results—Experiment 1 (N = 154).

	Touch condition	Control condition	Comparisons
Variable	M (SD)	M (SD)	t (1, 152)	p
Social distancing	3.79 (0.70)	3.42 (0.89)	2.94	.004
Sense of security	4.71 (0.79)	4.29 (0.99)	2.86	.004

These findings provided an initial demonstration regarding the dark side of interpersonal touch during the COVID-19 pandemic. Individuals in a touch condition involving a light and comforting touch were less willing to follow social distancing directives. In addition, our results shed initial light on the psychological mechanism that is responsible for the effect of interpersonal touch on compliance with social distancing. Specifically, this pattern of result suggests that, consistent with our reasoning, minimal physical contact indeed leads to more breaches of coronavirus restrictions because it strengthens participants’ feeling of security. In Experiment 2, we sought to replicate Experiment 1’s findings using a community sample and a behavioral measure of compliance with preventive measures.

Experiment 2

Method

Participants

The study took place in early December 2020. The local government reported a total of 576 confirmed cases of COVID-19 with six deaths. There were no newly reported cases and no death within the last 14 consecutive days during the experimental session. A total of 168 non-student adults (63.0% female; Mean age = 37.9, SD = 6.2) participated in our study. In exchange for participation, respondents received a gift voucher (15 RMB). Participants were recruited through community organization outreach (e.g., advertising fliers, social media, and referrals).

Materials and Procedure

A female experimenter, who was blind to the aim of the study, met participants 15 feet away from the experimental room. She asked each participant if they would like to take part in the study and informed participants that an easy-to-access hand sanitizing station was placed near the experimental room door. Participants were requested to follow the hygiene rule and to use the dispenser to safeguard their hands against germs due to the impact of COVID-19 before entering the experimental room. After giving an overview of the experimental procedure, she asked participants to go to the experimental room by themselves. In the touch condition, the experimenter administered a fleeting and comforting pat on participants’ shoulder blade for approximately 1–2 s in the implementation of the verbal instruction. In the control condition, no touch was administered accompanied by the verbal instruction. To ensure that the same manipulation was delivered equally effectively, we used the same experimenter with all the participants. Another research assistant, who was not visible to the participants, stood behind a one-way window of the experimental room recording hand-washing behavior of participants. After entering the experimental room, participants responded to a time management survey which was used to disguise the real purpose of the study and to the same 6-item questionnaire (α = .92) measuring their sense of security as in Experiment 1. Finally, participants were debriefed and thanked for their participation.

Results and Discussion

All participants correctly recalled the instruction that they needed to ensure hands were properly washed before entering the experimental room. Debriefing responses indicated that no participants correctly guessed the link between different sessions. We found that there was a significant difference in adherence to the hygiene rule between participants in the touch condition and those in the control condition, as revealed by a binary logistic regression, Wald χ2 (1, N = 168) = 6.61, p = .010, odds ratio = 0.42, 95% confidence interval (CI) = [0.220, 0.815]. The majority of participants (75%) in the no-touch condition washed their hands before entering the experimental room (p < .001). However, only about half of the participants (56%) in the touch condition washed their hands before entering the experimental room (p = .33).

Moreover, participants in the touch condition reported a higher level of security (M = 4.95, SD = 0.68) than those in the control condition (M = 4.51, SD = 1.10). t (166) = 3.11, p = .002, Cohen’d = 0.49, 95% confidence interval (CI) =[0.1606, 0.7187]. To examine whether sense of security mediated the effect of interpersonal touch on non-compliance with preventive measures, we conducted a bootstrapping analysis (Preacher & Hayes, 2008). This analysis revealed that feeling of security played a mediating role in the relationship between physical contact and non-adherence to hygiene rules, yielding a 95% confidence interval of −0.4324–−0.0025, which does not include zero (Table 2).

Table 2.

Summary of Results—Experiment 2 (N = 168).

	Touch condition	Control condition	Companions
Variable	(Yes/No)	(Yes/No)	Wald χ2	p
Hand hygiene	47: 37	63: 21	2.94	.004
Sense of security	M(SD)	M(SD)	t (1, 166)	p
Sense of security	4.95 (0.68)	4.51 (1.10)	3.11	.002

These findings offered further insight into the psychological processes that are triggered by interpersonal touch. The increased levels of sense of security that result from minimal physical contact led to more non-compliance with preventive measures to COVID-19 in a community population. Furthermore, this perceived safety mediates the effect of interpersonal touch on breaches of coronavirus restrictions. Despite Experiments 1 and 2 providing converging evidence for our main hypothesis regarding the negative effect of interpersonal touch on COVID-19 protective measures, an alternative explanation might be that touch intervention by the experimenter presents the defiance of COVID-19 rules, signaling to participants that it is not so important to follow pandemic recommendations. To exclude this possibility, we contrasted the effects of a maternal touch and a handshake in Experiment 3. If a touch on the shoulder can lead to more breach of coronavirus restrictions via instilling a sense of safety, we did not expect handshake by a female experimenter to exert the same effect on non-compliance with COVID-19 health guidelines. This is because a handshake cannot induce the same feelings of safety as a pat on the shoulder.

Experiment 3

Method

Participants

The study took place in January 2021. The local government reported a total of 576 confirmed cases of COVID-19 with six deaths. There were no newly reported cases and no death within the last 14 consecutive days during the experimental session. A total of 210 non-student adults (54.3% female; Mean age = 39.1, SD = 7.5) participated in our study. In exchange for participation, respondents received a gift voucher (15 RMB). Participants were recruited through community organization outreach (e.g., advertising fliers, social media, and referrals).

Materials and Procedure

We randomly assigned participants to one of the three experimental groups (shoulder, handshake, and control). The procedure of Experiment 3 was almost the same with Experiment 2. A female experimenter presented an overview of the experimental procedure to participants before they entered the experimental room. These verbal messages were either not accompanied by a touch (control condition) or accompanied by a touch on the shoulder or a handshake by the female experimenter. After giving an overview of the experimental procedure, she informed participants that an easy-to-access hand sanitizing station was available near the experimental room door. Participants were requested to follow the hygiene rule and to use the dispenser to safeguard their hands against germs due to the impact of COVID-19 before the experiment took place. Subsequently, the female experimenter asked participants to go to the experimental room by themselves. To ensure that the same manipulation was delivered equally effectively, we used the same experimenter with all the participants. Another research assistant, who was not visible to the participants, stood behind a one-way window of the experimental room recording hand-washing behavior of participants. After entering the experimental room, participants responded to a time management survey which was used to disguise the real purpose of the study as in Experiment 2.

Results and Discussion

All participants correctly recalled the instruction that they needed to ensure hands were properly washed before entering the experimental room. Debriefing responses indicated that no participants correctly guessed the link between physical contact and hand-washing behavior. We found that participants in the pat-on-shoulder condition (58.6%) were less likely to wash their hands than participants in the no-touch condition (78.6%, χ² (1) = 6.49, p = .01) and in the hand-shake condition (81.4%, χ² = 8.71, p = .003), respectively. However, the hand-washing rate did not differ significantly between participants in the no-touch condition and those in the hand-shake condition, χ² (1) = 0.17, p = .67 (Table 3). Thus, it is unlikely that touching on the shoulder represents a violation of social distancing measures and propels participants to break rules regarding hand hygiene since handshake is also a typical form of human touch and interaction in daily life.

Table 3.

Summary of Results—Experiment 3 (N = 210).

	Control condition	Hand-shake condition	Shoulder condition	Companions
Variable	(Yes/No)	(Yes/No)	(Yes/No)	χ2 (1, N= 210)	p
Hand hygiene	55: 15	57: 13	41: 29	10.98	.004

General Discussion

In examining social and cognitive consequences of interpersonal touch, the vast majority of research has primarily focused on its beneficial effects on health and well-being (Field, 1998; Papathanassoglou & Mpouzika, 2012). In the current investigation, we called into doubt its widespread approbation by unveiling a potential downside: increased breaches of coronavirus restrictions. The effect of interpersonal touch on non-compliance with preventive measures to COVID-19 was robust across studies that employed different research methodologies (self-reports and behavioral measure) and samples (student and community populations). In Experiment 1, student participants who experienced interpersonal touch were less willing to follow social distancing rules according to their self-report. Experiment 2 complemented self-reports with ecologically valid behavioral measures and replicated the same findings in non-student participants. In addition, we identified one mechanism—sense of security—that explains the effects of interpersonal touch on preventive behaviors against COVID-19: Physical contact creates a feeling of security, which in turn increases non-adherence to health guidelines. To exclude the explanation that interpersonal touch sends a message to participants that they do not need to strictly follow social distancing measures, Experiment 3 manipulated the type of touch (shoulder and handshake). It was found that only a light pat on the back of the shoulder can exert an influence on people’s noncompliance with preventive measures to COVID-19. Thus, a more plausible explanation is that interpersonal physical touch—assumed to be mediated by the sense of security—impacts people to behave contrary to recommended rules under the Covid pandemic.

Our research represents the first attempt to investigate the role of tactile touching behaviors, one important form of social interaction, in influencing the willingness to abide by coronavirus rules. The existing literature has almost exclusively focused on the bright side of accidental interpersonal touch such as alleviating existential concerns, elevating generalized trust, and reducing uncertainty (Koole et al., 2014; Levav & Argo, 2010; Van Horen & Mussweiler, 2014). By identifying a dark side of interpersonal touch in the form of more violations of coronavirus guidelines, we presented a more balanced view of the positive and negative psychological outcomes of interpersonal touch.

In a recent study conducted by Brummelman et al., 2019, they found that parental touch is a safety-signaling for children and thus reduce their social vigilance. However, this effect cannot be observed in adolescents because they seek to gain independence from parents and venture into the world autonomously. Extending beyond these findings, the present research shows that certain type of interpersonal touch—even as subtle as a fleeting touch on the shoulder—can create a sense of security even in adults and make them more prone to violating preventive control measures. This reminds us that feeling of security may not be the only mechanism linking interpersonal touch to Covid breaches. For example, research has found that vigilance was positively related to compliance with precautionary behavioral measures (Chang & Sivam, 2004; Makhanova & Shepherd, 2020). Thus, the reduced vigilance by physical contact may also play a role. Such alternative mechanisms warrant future exploration.

Some critics may argue that touching indicates a violation of precautionary measures elicited by COVID-19. In other words, it may model and send a message to participant that there is no need to observe social distancing measures. However, we found that the level of compliance with public health guidelines were the same in the control and hand-shake conditions, which seems to undermine this possibility. This pattern of results is in concert with our theoretical perspective and is most likely due to the fact that making a handshake with a female experimenter cannot create a strong sense of security and social attachment. Thus, a somewhat more realistic account of the observed effect might be that interpersonal touch can be influential in eliciting the relaxation response, which in turn leads to more violations of preventive measures to confront Coronavirus pandemic.

Previous research has virtually always assessed Covid rule breaches through self-report. However, participants may not respond truthfully due to a variety of reasons (Garry et al., 2021). For instance, O’Connor and Evans (2020) found that about a quarter of participants in their study reported different levels of concealment of their social/physical distancing practices. Thus, while we recognize the importance of questionnaire for the measurement of unethicality during the pandemic, it is important to assess it with real-world behavior. The present investigation is one of the first research to assess compliance with preventive measures behaviorally and thus contributes to the health psychology literature by assessing with different tasks especially action-relevant outcomes.

The results of our studies also have clear policy implications. Keeping social distancing such as staying at least six feet away from others and avoiding interpersonal touch with other people is crucial for preventing the spread of contagious illnesses (Thu et al., 2020). This is because the close contact may spread the virus to others during the pandemic (Y. Li et al., 2020). Our findings suggest that even physically contacting with non-infectious individuals also has negative consequences since it can create a simple illusion of feeling of safety. By signaling safety, interpersonal touch would reduce people’s awareness about the importance of following coronavirus precautions and lead to more COVID-19 protocol violations.

Still, this research has several limitations, which may inform future research. First, the sample in the current study consists solely of Chinese participants. Numerous studies have shown that there is a great deal of cultural variation in interpretation and responses to interpersonal touch (Finnegan, 2002; Sorokowska et al., 2021). For instance, compared to individuals from Northern Europe and Asia, people belong to certain culture such as Italy and France touch each other more frequently in social communication (Jourard, 1966). Thus, it would be valuable to investigate the scalability of the observed effect across different cultures. Second, while the present research have investigated the mediating mechanism for the effect of interpersonal touch on following containment measures elicited by the COVID-19 pandemic, it would be valuable to examine potential moderators in future studies, such as individual differences in touch avoidance and the need for touch (Willis & Rinck, 1983). Touch avoidance, characterized by a tendency to approach or avoid interpersonal touch, is a stable individual difference construct (Brennan et al., 1998). It could be a moderator for the consequences of interpersonal touch: People feel more comfortable being touched may be especially likely to be influenced by subtle physical contact, such that they may display more defiance of public health restrictions because they have more feelings of safety and security. Such possibilities warrant further investigations in future research. Finally, researchers paid more attention to social distancing behavior among adults. There is a paucity of information regarding the status of hand hygiene and mask wearing among children. For instance, Chen et al. (2020) found that only about 40% of the primary school students displayed an excellent hand-washing behavior. Since touch is one main means of communication between parents and children, future research can investigate the effect of parent touch on children’s coronavirus prevention.

Conclusion

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to ravage communities throughout the world, preventive measures such as social distancing and hand hygiene are still essential for changing the course of this pandemic and for flattening the curve. Thus, it is critical that social scientists pay special attention to how people behave in controlling the outbreak. In this vein, the three experiments we have reported demonstrate that interpersonal touch can instill the feeling of safety and minimize things causing people to feel unsafe, which in turn results in more breaches of coronavirus restrictions. These findings suggest that subtle physical contact can exert a strong influence on health-related decision making. Despite interpersonal touch promoting enhanced physical health and well-being through its impact on stress-sensitive parameters, it can also push people away from public health protocols.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Social Science Foundation of Chongqing Municipality of China grant number 2019BS020 and 11802174 and The Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, Southwest University grant number SWU1909753.

Ethical approval

This study was approved by the ethical board of School of Foreign Languages, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law and all procedures performed in it involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

ORCID iD

Heng Li

Note

Author Biographies

Heng Li is a Cognitive Science professor in the College of International Studies at Southwest University. His work seeks to explore cultural and individual differences in cognitive processing. His multidisciplinary interests bring him to address this question from various interrelated perspectives: cognitive linguistics, signed languages, spontaneous gestures, experiments and field research.

Yu Cao is an associate professor at the School of Foreign Languages at Zhongnan University of Economics and Law. His current research is on different aspects of cognitive processing in metaphorical representations.

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