ArticlePsychological research2022
Is justice grounded? How expertise shapes conceptual representation of institutional concepts.
Article in Psychological research, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed.
- Thinking climate change through the lens of abstractness: a multi-task and multi-setting investigation into generational differences in the conceptualization of ecology.Cognitive research: principles and implications · 2025Article
- Water Is and Is Not HCognitive science · 2025Article
- Abstract concepts and expertise: the case of institutional concepts.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- The geo domain: a review on the conceptualization of geographical and geopolitical entities.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Review
- Social semantics: the organization and grounding of abstract concepts.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Review
- Abstract concepts: external influences, internal constraints, and methodological issues.Psychological research · 2022Review
- Concrete constraints on abstract concepts-editorial.Psychological research · 2022Article
- Ultimate Grounding of Abstract Concepts: A Graded Account.Journal of cognition · 2022Article
- Abstract Concepts, Social Interaction, and Beliefs.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- From Affordances to Abstract Words: The Flexibility of Sensorimotor Grounding.Brain sciences · 2021Review
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Using abstract concepts is a hallmark of human cognition. While multiple kinds of abstract concepts exist, they so far have been conceived as a unitary kind in opposition to concrete ones. Here, we focus on Institutional concepts, like justice or norm, investigating their fine-grained differences with respect to other kinds of abstract and concrete concepts, and exploring whether their representation varies according to individual proficiency. Specifically, we asked experts and non-experts in the legal field to evaluate four kinds of concepts (i.e., institutional, theoretical, food, artefact) on 16 dimensions: abstractness-concreteness; imageability; contextual availability; familiarity; age of acquisition; modality of acquisition; social valence; social metacognition; arousal; valence; interoception; metacognition; perceptual modality strength; body-object interaction; mouth and hand involvement. Results showed that Institutional concepts rely more than other categories on linguistic/social and inner experiences and are primarily characterized by positive valence. In addition, a more subtle characterization of the institutional domain emerged: Pure-institutional concepts (e.g., parliament) were perceived as more similar to technical tools, while Meta-institutional concepts (e.g., validity) were characterized mainly by abstract components. Importantly, for what concerns individual proficiency, we found that the level of expertise affects conceptual representation. Only law-experts associated Institutional concepts with exteroceptive and emotional experiences, showing also a more grounded and situated representation of the two types of institutional concepts. Overall, our finding highlights the richness and flexibility of abstract concepts and suggests that they differ in the degree of embodiment and grounding. Implications of the results for current theories of conceptual representation and social institutions are discussed.
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