Feeling the kneeling : the power of body
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| Year of publication | 2012 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
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| Description | Emphasis on the influence of body posture and body processes on emotional reactions is found in psychology as early as the works of Charles Darwin and William James. Contemporary theory concerning embodied cognition can be regarded as an heir to this tradition. From this perspective, the body is studied as an important mediator of emotions. Body posture, in particular its change, influences the subjective experience of emotion. Individuals induced to assume postures characteristic to certain emotions reported feelings correspondent with those postures; those who slumped tended to feel sad, and those who sat more forward with clenched fists tended to feel anger. Clues to the relationship between the body and emotions can also be observed in metaphorical language describing emotional states, e.g. "feeling down" or "feeling great". My research is based on those notions. The main field of interest is the manipulation of body posture during religious ritual. The usage of specific postures may imply a particular function of such postures in ritual behavior and the perception of ritual. More generally, I am interested in exploring whether and how bodily positions influence feelings, emotional states and self-perceptions. The first bodily position examined is kneeling. This posture appears in many forms in different rituals and a great variety of other contexts and situations. On the symbolic level, kneeling is usually linked with subordination, humility and submission. Considering those assumptions, my hypothesis asserts that kneeling induces higher feelings of subordination. |
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