Looking up, kneeling down: why the position matters
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| Year of publication | 2014 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Citation | |
| Description | Most religious traditions are built upon strict power distinctions between the human and superhuman/divine. While superhuman entities are often described as omnipotent or having supernatural powers, humans are presented as weak, humble and powerless. Some traditions accentuate this distinction not only in teachings, but also in visual representations and with demands of visible submissive behaviour towards the superhuman agents. Apart from culturally grounded cues of power and dominance, verticality is often used as a basis to distinguish the powerful from the subordinate, both visually and as a bodily expression. Recent research in perception and metaphor shows a direct connection between the placement and size of a stimulus (semantic or visual) and the estimation of its importance and power. Stimuli placed high in a vertical space are perceived as more powerful and are perceived as more dominant, whereas those placed on bottom positions are perceived as inferior. Similarly, open and expansive bodily positions (standing) are connected to dominant behaviour, while closed, collapsed and lowered postures are perceived as expressing submission and obedience. Current theorizing in the area of embodied cognition claims that bodily positions and environmental settings play an important role in composition of specific embodied states. Thus, bodily positions are not just the result of some antecedent emotional state; they are a necessary part of the emergence and shaping of states. Experimental evidence supports this assertion for many bodily postures – there is however no exhaustive research program focusing on submissive positions and dominance cues in religious rituals. In the light of existing research, I argue that submissive bodily positions in religious rituals are not mere expressions of subordination, but that they establish and modulate the submissive attitude and behaviour towards the superhuman agents. |
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