Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

People implicitly associate different emotions with differentlocations in left-right space. Which dimensions of emotion dothey spatialize? Across many studies people spatializeemotional valence, mapping positive emotions onto theirdominant side of space and negative emotions onto their non-dominant side. Yet, other results suggest a contradictorymapping of emotional intensity (a.k.a., emotional magnitude),according to which people associate more intense emotionswith the right and less intense emotions with the left, regardlessof valence. To resolve this apparent contradiction, we firsttested whether people implicitly spatialize whicheverdimension of emotion they attend to. Results showed thepredicted valence mapping, but no intensity mapping. We thentested an alternative explanation of findings previouslyinterpreted as showing an intensity mapping; these data mayreflect a left-right mapping of spatial magnitude, not emotion.People implicitly spatialize emotional valence, but there is noclear evidence for an implicit lateral mapping of emotionalintensity.