Morality approached from embodied cognition: a systematic review

Morality is conceived as a form of cognition that determines social values and behaviors. Nevertheless, traditional representational cognitive explanations have been unsatisfactory. Alternative theories are the embodiment, which considers that the body, action, and context constitute cognition. These approaches offer a revolutionary perspective in the study of morality, making it possible to overcome the limitations of more traditional positions. Therefore, this work sought to analyze the characteristics and main results of the articles published between 1980 and 2022 that have addressed morality from an embodied cognition perspective. A scoping review was carried out according to the PRISMA statement. Fifty-one articles met the inclusion criteria. These papers showed that research on embodied morality has increased in the last decade, especially empirical research, and has been primarily concerned with the relationship between sensorimotor metaphors and moral behavior. In particular, the authors report the following associations: perception of disgust with immorality, cleanliness of body and hands with reduction of distress caused by wrong actions, body weight with guilt, and body openness with immorality. Furthermore, few studies were found outside of North America and Europe, showing a lack of research in other world areas where it could have critical applications, such as Africa or South America. The applications were primarily theoretical, although political, clinical, and social uses were also explored. We recommend several pathways for future research in this area based on these findings. First, sample diversity should be expanded regarding participants' age, social, cultural, and economic background. Future research should include practitioners from disciplines other than psychology and neuroscience, as embodied morality encompasses social, economic, and linguistic factors. Regarding the methods used, future research could implement more situated techniques that consider the body and environmental, relational, and cultural factors. Lastly, we recommend that researchers in this area continue replicating the results, which gives them greater validity and broadens their theories by implementing different and diverse methods and samples and studying new body aspects. 1) there is a gradual increase during the 20th century in publications, reflecting a developing disciplinary field; 2) the samples used to be university students, limiting the generalization of the results; 3) the most consistent association between morality and the body refers to the use of sensorimotor metaphors about disgust, cleanliness, openness, and body weight; and 4) the most used methods continue to be the classic moral dilemmas, which indicates that a methodological break towards more situated and ecological methods is still required.