Meaning Moderates the Persuasive Effect of Physical Actions: Buying, Selling, Touching, Carrying, and Cleaning Thoughts as If They Were Commercial Products

We review research showing that the meaning of physical actions matters, that meaning can vary, and that the key element of meaning to affect judgments is the perceived validity of the thoughts. This article first describes studies on embodied persuasion for which changing the meaning of a behavior also changes the effect of that behavior on attitudes. Second, this article focuses on the impact of objects that people wear on their judgments. The last section covers a paradigm in which thoughts are treated as if they were consumer products (e.g., buying vs. selling thoughts). Across these three sections, we argue that judgmental effects having to do with the physical actions and physical objects associated with concepts such as intelligence, power, and happiness, all can work by the same mechanism. That is, the important factor concerns the impact each of these has on the perceived validity of one’s thoughts.