“Mother nature doesn’t have a bullet with your name on it”: Coding with reference to one’s name or object location?

When movements of a joystick toward/away from the self are made in response to positive/negative words, performance is better with the positive-toward/negative-away mapping than with the alternative mapping, consistent with an approach-avoidance motivational account. Markman and Brendl (2005) instructed participants to move a positive or negative word toward or away from their name, located on a bar at the center of a three-dimensional display. The positive-toward/negative-away mapping relative to the name’s location was preferred, which means that relative to the body the preferred mapping reversed to positive-away/negative-toward when the word was in front of the name. This finding was interpreted as demonstrating that “the compatibility effect depends on people’s representation of their selves in space rather than on their physical location” (p. 6). Alternatively, this effect may arise from the bar providing a salient referent object for coding relative location. We report an experiment that replicates these findings but shows similar results when there is no name on the bar and/or no three-dimensional perspective. An account in terms of action effects involving implied movement of the word toward or away from a referent object rather than a representation of self provides the simplest explanation of the compatibility effect.