Embodied spatial metaphor of cultural concept from the perspective of cultural tightness–looseness: Cultural compatibility concept is closer to the body

The body carries culture, with cultural concepts emerging from the dynamic interplay between the body and its environment. By integrating social representation theory and embodied cognition, we explored the use of embodied spatial metaphors in representing cultural tightness–looseness across three studies. In Study 1, 84 participants were randomly assigned to either a tight or loose culture group and tasked with placing cultural words within a spatial context. Participants positioned culturally compatible words closer to themselves and incompatible words farther away, illustrating the use of spatial distance metaphors to represent cultural tightness–looseness. Study 2 used an implicit task, demonstrating that people from both tight and loose cultures exhibited greater accuracy in judging culturally compatible concepts (vs. incompatible concepts) when these words were close to themselves. Study 3 unveiled distinct patterns of embodied spatial metaphors between tight and loose cultures when comparing cultural and irrelevant words. Notably, metaphors depicting nearness for culturally compatible words and farness for irrelevant words emerged exclusively in tight cultures, while such patterns were absent in loose cultures. Overall, our findings empirically support the notion that social representations are embodied, and provide embodied evidence for understanding and representing concepts related to cultural tightness–looseness.