How much control do you have over how much control you think you have?

 Ent and Baumeister’s study, now out in the journal Consciousness and Cognition, suggests that humans are more than brains on a plate, that our bodies profoundly shape the ways we think and act. It supports a theory called embodied cognition, which—despite the prevailing dualist image of people as computers wrapped in meat—posits that even our most abstract thoughts could not happen without concrete experience. Embodied cognition explains why we often understand affection as warmth, or love as a journey, or importance as physical weight.
 By Katy Waldman /continue