Boyer & Petersen (B&P) analyze folk-economic beliefs (FEBs) “by considering the environment in which many, if not most, human cognitive mechanisms evolved” (sect. 1.1, para. 2) and suggest that the cultural acceptance of FEBs is subject to “the influence of specialized, largely automatic inference systems that evolved as adaptations to ancestral human small-scale sociality” (target article Abstract). Complementing this perspective, we note that people interact with the world through their body and experience it through their senses. Higher mental processes are grounded in these basic experiences (Barsalou Reference Barsalou2008), and their role in abstract thought is reflected in the metaphorical expressions people use in common parlance (Lakoff & Johnson Reference Lakoff and Johnson1999; Landau Reference Landau2017; Landau et al. Reference Landau, Robinson and Meier2014; Lee Reference Lee2016; Lee & Schwarz Reference Lee, Schwarz, Landau, Robinson and Meier2014). The grounding of FEBs in basic physical experiences that are concrete, easy to process, and common to all further facilitates their communication and acceptance. A grounded perspective is compatible with B&P's analysis and observations and predicts additional psychological properties regarding the online activation and application of FEBs in daily life. (See Table 1).

Table 1.

Folk-economic beliefs (FEBs)*, physical experiences that are hypothesized to ground them, and inferences drawn from the physical experiences.

* See B&P's target article for full details.

B&P argue that “[people] make up their attitudes and beliefs ‘on the spot,’ by retrieving relevant cultural representations, and […] activating the relevant intuitive inference systems” (sect. 6.2, para. 3). Because mental processing is grounded in physical experience, situational changes in physical experience can influence the construction of attitudes and beliefs in a highly context-sensitive manner (Schwarz & Lee, Reference Schwarz, Lee, Albarracín and Johnsonin press). For example, reflecting a close link between physical and social warmth (Bargh & Shalev Reference Bargh and Shalev2012), people perceive the physical environment as colder when they are socially rejected (Zhong & Leonardelli Reference Zhong and Leonardelli2008); conversely, they feel closer to others (IJzerman & Semin Reference IJzerman and Semin2009) and treat them more favorably (Williams & Bargh Reference Williams and Bargh2008) when the physical environment is warm. Similarly, FEBs can be activated by incidental physical experiences. For example, temporary hunger affects welfare attitudes and people are more supportive of providing for the needs of the population before than after lunch, an effect mediated by subjective feelings of hunger (Petersen et al. Reference Petersen, Aarøe, Jensen and Curry2014). Messages framed in ways that match the applicable metaphor are more persuasive (Cian et al. Reference Cian, Krishna and Schwarz2015).

B&P assume that “prior psychological assumptions and expectations make certain representations easier to acquire, store, and communicate than others” and that “an ‘attraction’ process … results in the spread of highly particular mental representations” (sect. 3.4, para. 2). From a grounded perspective, the intuitive, easily processed, and culturally shared nature of FEBs results from shared experience with the same physical world. Because basic physical experiences (e.g., balance, force, temperature) are common to all, the corresponding FEBs are accessible to all. Nevertheless, individuals differ in how frequently they have specific physical experiences and how strongly they react to them (e.g., anxiously attached people react to cues of physical warmth more strongly than securely attached people do; Fay & Maner Reference Fay and Maner2012). Such differences may moderate the likelihood and strength of endorsing a related FEB. For this reason, FEBs that are grounded in the most perceptually intense and functionally important physical experiences shared by everyone (e.g., food, temperature) should be the most compelling at the population level, influential for collective judgments and decisions, and successful within and across cultures (cf. Akpinar & Berger Reference Akpinar and Berger2015; Lee & Schwarz Reference Lee and Schwarz2012; Lee et al. Reference Lee, Tang, Wan, Mai and Liu2015).

Because basic physical experiences involve simple relations of cause and effect, the corresponding FEBs exhibit simple, one-step, two- or few-agents causal relations rather than complex, multi-step systems of causality. For example, the grounding of international trade in physical balance renders it a zero-sum game because in physical balance, when one side increases, the other side decreases. Beliefs like FEB 1 reflect that people understand and apply this simple, one-step, two-agents process of intuitive causality, as opposed to the wide scope and long chain of indirect effects of international trade.

As these comments indicate, we embrace B&P's admonition that folk-economic views should not be seen “as irrational deviations from normative understandings of economic processes,” but as “the outcome of principled cognitive systems” (sect. 7, para. 2). These systems evolved in response to recurrent problems that included the physical as well as the social world. Exploring the implications of a grounded cognition perspective for lay reasoning about economic processes presents ample opportunities for future research.