Imagined Expanding Graphics And Self-Concept

Self-concept is topic which has long been discussed in the history of psychology.There is a very closely link between our self-concept and our personality,individual development,mental health,and external behavior.In our daily lives and language,such a phenomenon can be observed:People often express abstract concepts as physically existed objects,and describe them with physical attributes such as size,hardness,and warmth.Those are metaphorical expressions in our language.The concept of self is also described with words usually used for actual objects such as expansion,growth.In recent years,with the rise of embodied cognitive theory,many researchers no longer simply think metaphor as just a language phenomenon.Instead,some researchers suggest that metaphor is an important tool for human cognition to understand abstract concepts.Experiences from direct senses helped the conceptualization of abstract concepts through the metaphor transfer strategy.Metaphors use cross-domain mapping from the field of direct experiences to the field of abstract concepts,and thus construct an abstract conceptual system.That is the main idea of conceptual metaphor theory.Studies have shown that a basic cross-domain mapping between expansion movement and self-concept may be existed.Is this metaphorical mapping also present in the Chinese context?How the metaphorical mapping affected by specific individual traits?In addition,embodied cognition theory suggests that there is a feeling-movement consistency in human nervous system."Just thinking about an object produces embodied states as if the object were actually there".Can imagination trigger the same metaphor mapping effect just like actual experiences?This study explored those problems from three aspects of expansion-self concept metaphor.First,we examined the existence of expansion-self concept metaphor in the Chinese context.Second,we tried to answer whether imagination can trigger this expansion-self concept metaphor mapping or not.And third,we explored personality traits that might be relevant in the metaphorical mapping process.We designed and carried out three experiments.1)A pre-experiment study to test the feasibility of materials in the study,and to simply examine the cross domain metaphor between expansion and self concept.2)Subjects were asked to complete a task during which they were exposed under expanding or narrowing graphics,then we examine their self concept level.Individual traits were under control.3)We asked subjects to imagine expanding or narrowing graphics instead of actually see them,to see whether imagination can also trigger cross-domain metaphor mapping.The results show that:1)The sensory perception of expanding graphics can result higher level of self-concept,in Chinese context,the expansion-self-concept metaphor is a psychological reality;2)Cognitive style of subjects can influence the mapping process.The presence of field dependence tendency leads to stronger cross-domain mapping.3)Differences of Locus of control among subjects do not affect the process of cross-domain mapping of expansion and self concept.4)Imagined expanding graphics can trigger the cross-domain mapping of expansion and self concept just like actual visual simulation.