In their paper, Lee and Schwarz (L&S) argue that grounded procedures may not only help individuals in separating from an entity but may also allow them to establish a mental connection to an entity. In this manner, procedures of connection may be considered as the flipside of procedures of separation. Although we agree with this notion, we also think that procedures of connection need to be conceptualized more precisely. In particular, as procedures of separation are typically preceded by procedures of connection (e.g., washing away something that has become connected to you), a more fine-grained analysis of these procedures may also enhance our understanding of the mental and physical processes associated with separation. Put differently, a full account of how people separate from an entity must include an account of how they connect to that entity in the first place.

To this end, it is useful to draw on research in consumer behavior that has examined how acts of consumption allow people to connect to more abstract entities. Although consumers draw on a range of procedures to ground mental connection of one psychological entity (e.g., the meaning associated with a product) to another (e.g., their self), the nature of these procedures, their psychological aims, and their corresponding motor actions differ strongly. For instance, individuals may ground mental connection by touching a physical entity such as a product. Touching may not only be triggered by the desire to learn more about the product, but also by the desire to establish a mental connection with the product or the meaning associated with the product (Lastovicka & Sirianni, Reference Lastovicka and Sirianni2011; Peck & Childers, Reference Peck and Childers2003; Peck & Shu, Reference Peck and Shu2009). As such, touching a product enhances feelings of psychological ownership and these feelings may emerge regardless of legal ownership (Peck, Barger, & Webb, Reference Peck, Barger and Webb2013). Hence, touching may allow a person to develop a mental connection through a temporary physical connection (Nägele, von Walter, Scharfenberger, & Wentzel, Reference Nägele, von Walter, Scharfenberger and Wentzel2020).

Mental connection may also be grounded through incorporating or penetrating an entity. The former procedure refers to incorporating an external entity into one's body, such as eating or drinking something, inhaling a fume, or getting a tattoo (Escalas & Bettman, Reference Escalas and Bettman2003; Johnston, Szabo, & Rodney, Reference Johnston, Szabo and Rodney2011), whereas the latter one entails being encompassed by an external entity, such as being held in the arms by a loved one, wearing a particular garment, or sitting in one's car (Adam & Galinsky, Reference Adam and Galinsky2012). Although incorporating and penetrating refer to different bodily processes, they share a common psychological aim – that of creating a temporal or permanent unity between an external entity and one's body. Hence, these procedures may be particularly effective for including the meaning of an external entity into one's extended self (Belk, Reference Belk1988).

Finally, mental connection may also be facilitated through creating an entity. Consumers that actively participate in the creation of a product (e.g., assembling IKEA products, building Lego cars, or printing products with a three-dimensional printer) typically demonstrate a higher valuation of this product afterward (Kaiser, Schreier, & Janiszewski, Reference Kaiser, Schreier and Janiszewski2017; Mochon, Norton, & Ariely, Reference Mochon, Norton and Ariely2012; Wiecek, Wentzel, & Erkin, Reference Wiecek, Wentzel and Erkin2020). Although creating a consumption-related object may increase feelings of ownership for that object (Wiecek et al., Reference Wiecek, Wentzel and Erkin2020), it may also fulfill more specific psychological aims. That is, successfully building an object may fulfill consumers' desire to signal a competent identity to themselves and to others and may thus serve a self-validation goal (Mochon et al., Reference Mochon, Norton and Ariely2012).

Although this list of procedures of connection – touching, incorporating, penetrating, and creating – is probably not exhaustive, it serves to show that people rely on very different motor actions to ground mental connection and that different actions may serve different psychological goals. Hence, an extension of L&S's model would benefit from a more detailed analysis of grounded procedures of connection.

This kind of analysis will also help to extend the model in a different manner. If, as L&S suggest, procedures of connection are the flipside of procedures of separation, then it is important to understand how these two procedures are related. In some cases, an act of separation will reflect the logical opposite of the corresponding act of connection. For instance, although putting on a particular item of clothing may help individuals to connect with an external entity (e.g., a football fan wearing a jersey of his or her favorite team), taking off that same item will help them to disconnect from it. In a similar vein, painters such as Jasper Johns, Francis Bacon, and John Baldessari were notorious for destroying some of the works they had created, Baldessari even taking the trouble of burning his work in a crematorium.

Although these examples point to a conceptual alignment between procedures of connection and separation, such matches are probably the exception rather than the norm. If, as proposed by L&S, procedures of connection and separation are domain-general, people may rely on different procedures for connecting than for disconnecting. Against this background, it is not only important to understand how people use grounded procedures to separate from an entity but also to comprehend how these procedures are affected by the specific procedures of connection that precede them. Arguably, the extent to which procedures of separation are aligned with preceding procedures of connection may depend on the specificity of the underlying motivational process (i.e., procedures of connection that serve very specific psychological aims may only be unraveled through equally specific procedures of separation, whereas procedures that serve more generic aims can be dissolved through many different separation procedures) or the engagement of the initial sensorimotor experience (i.e., connections that are formed through high sensorimotor engagement, such as actual physical movement, can only be undone through an equally engaging procedure of separation, whereas connections that are forged through lower engagement, such as offline simulation, may be disbanded by procedures differing in engagement). Understanding such conceptual links will not only help in predicting which specific procedures people may use for separating from an entity but may also enhance our understanding of the complementary nature of connection and separation.