Individual differences in the physical embodiment of care: Prosocially oriented women respond to cuteness by becoming more physically careful.

Abstract

Prosocially oriented individuals tend to respond to care-relevant stimuli in a highly embodied manner. Research on facets of prosocial orientation-such as empathy-and embodiment has focused on processes triggered by the perception of others' distress or pain. We suspect that the predisposition among prosocially oriented individuals toward having embodied responses to care-relevant stimuli might be more extensive. We tested the specific hypothesis that prosocial orientation would predict the likelihood of responding to cuteness (an understudied care stimulus that does not involve overt distress) with the physical embodiment of care: increased physical carefulness. In 2 studies, for prosocially oriented women only, cuteness elicited greater physical carefulness in a manual precision task. For such women, the elevated state of care elicited by cuteness cues is not only a coordinated set of feelings and motives but it is also a physically embodied state characterized by heightened carefulness in one's physical movements.