“It's hip to be square”: Grounding moral traits in geometric shapes

: To examine the hypothesis that there is a metaphoric link between geometric shapes (square vs. circle) and moral traits (integrity vs. deviousness), we conducted three experiments in China. In Study 1, integrity-related words were classified faster when embedded in a square than in a circle. Conversely, deviousness-related words were classified faster in a circle than in a square. Study 2 found that a person who preferred squares was perceived as more righteous and that a person who preferred circles was perceived as more devious. Study 3 revealed that the participants were more likely to pair a square with integrity-related words and a circle with deviousness-related words in a memory task. Given the negation of square-integrity and circle-deviousness emotional congruence, the findings of this research show that shape-related information is a meaningful part of the mental representations of moral traits.