Abstract

The present study aims to investigate whether words with economic meaning related to loss (e.g., unemployment) and gain (e.g., salary) are represented along a spatial dimension, in line with the evidence provided by the SNARC effect literature. Results indicate that participants have a better performance when responding with the left key to loss-words and with the right key to gain-words, respectively. This effect has been found, though, only when the loss/gain discrimination was salient for the task that participants were to perform. Taken together, these data support the idea that loss/ gain concepts are associated to small/large numerical magnitudes, as it is for numbers, and placed along the left/right side of a mental number line.