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The Missing Link: Information Behavior Research

and its Estranged Relationship with Embodiment1


Christopher P. Lueg
Information & Interaction (i2) Research Group
University of Tasmania
Hobart, TAS, Australia
christopher.lueg@utas.edu.au

ABSTRACT

In this brief contribution we argue that an apparent dichotomy between information behavior seen as the behavior of
individuals and their respective information styles and information behavior considered a social practice may be resolved by
considering the under-researched corporeality of the human body aka embodiment which is a fundamental aspect of any kind
of behavior, including information behavior. Practice is inherently embodied too which means embodiment can be utilized as
a vantage point to seek conceptual grounding for the rather diverse range of theories and models in information behavior
research. The challenge then is to articulate in what way and on what level a particular approach contributes to advancing
information behavior research. Conceptual clarity would also help information behavior models and theories developed in
library and information science become more accessible and hopefully also more relevant to researchers in cognate
disciplines.
INTRODUCTION

Book reviews and opinion pieces recently published in this journal by well-established information behavior researchers
suggest that there is a dichotomy between researchers exploring individuality in information behavior aka information styles
(Bawden and Robinson 2013) and researchers advocating information behavior more fruitfully be considered a social
practice (Julien 2012). In this opinion piece we acknowledge the different perspectives and suggest that the under-valued and
1

Accepted for publication in the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, Wiley.

Please cite/reference the authoritative version published by JASIST!

under-researched corporeality of the human existence aka embodiment helps explain why both perspectives have their merits,
and what both are lacking.
Rakova (2006) defines embodiment as "the fact that we are not pure minds but minds embedded in bodies". Hoffmann and
Pfeifer's (2011, p. 32) discussion of some of the main implications of embodiment for behavior and research thereof provides
crucial details:
"While embodiment has often been used in its trivial meaning, i.e. intelligence requires a body, there are deeper and more
important consequences, concerned with connecting brain, body, and environment. The behavior of any system is not merely
the outcome of an internal control structure (such as the central nervous system); it is also affected by the ecological niche in
which the system is physically embedded, by its morphology (the shape of its body and limbs, as well as the type and
placement of sensors and effectors), and by the material properties of the elements composing the morphology. This
embedding impacts the physical as well as the information (neural, control) processes that all together manifest themselves
in a particular behavior."
A contested question in information behavior research appears to be to what extent embodiment and implications thereof
need to be considered, that is beyond a trivial notion of embodiment as 'having a body', and whether there is a line to be
drawn between the body, cognition, behavior, and social practice, assuming that there is one that would make sense to be
articulated in the context of information behavior research.
In what follows we will establish that it is the corporeality of our bodies that scaffolds how we perceive the world in which
we are situated, how we think about that world, and how we engage with that world. In the context of this discussion it is
particularly important to note that our physicality also determines to a significant extent options for participation in, and
exposure to, social practice.
We wish to emphasize three aspects of embodiment that are particularly relevant to the discussion: the uniqueness of each of
our physical bodies, the specific characteristics of human perception, and the resulting experience that is fundamentally (and
literally) individual, all of which are deeply intertwined with each other via the corporeality of our bodies. Occasionally,
those points are touched upon in the information behavior literature but in most cases without deeper reflection as to what
embodiment actually means for human information behavior and research thereof.
Distinguishing between body and perception is tricky, to say the least, because of the deep integration of human perception,
cognition, and, in the end, behavior. We use, in many different ways, the whole body for perceiving, not just what is

traditionally considered our senses. Integration of body and perception goes as a far as the brain using a significant amount of
non-visual information for what we typically call 'seeing' (e.g., we tend to see what we expect to see cf. Kuhn et al. 2008; see
also Lueg 2014 for a discussion specifically in the context of information behavior) and using some of the same brain
'circuitry' when dealing with spatial, temporal, and social distance (Parkinson et al 2014).
The point is that perception, cognition, and behavior are so deeply integrated that distinguishing between different types of
information behaviors as proposed by some scholars may be meaningful only on few occasions. This author would actually
argue against the popular notion that there are information behaviors that could be identified as (purely) optical or cognitive.
Emphasizing embodiment is not at odds with the substantial body of work in library and information science on determining
'situational factors' that are likely to influence information behavior, such as experience, background, knowledge level,
beliefs, and personal preferences (Barry 1994). More recently, Keilty (2012) highlighted other factors including "anxiety,
desire, leisure, pleasure, boredom, frustration, uncertainty, curiosity, serendipity, surprise, anticipation, immersion, sensemaking or cognition, habits, and memory, among others", many of which are in fact linked to embodiment which makes them
particularly relevant to this paper. It is interesting to note that the body has been recognized in library and information
science research as early as the 1960s (e.g., Taylor, 1962; see also Bates 1989 and Kwasnik 1992, among many others) but
we would argue that the impact of some of the most fundamental, mediating aspects of embodiment remains underestimated
in library and information science research.
The following three sections are labeled fallacies to highlight the potential of some surprisingly pervasive ideas to deceive
information behavior researchers.
FALLACY: EVERY BODY IS THE SAME

Often it is assumed in information behavior research that human bodies are somewhat similar, at least similar enough to treat
them as if they were similar. After all, without making that assumption it would not make much sense to make statements
about information behavior on the level of groups and even professions.
While de-emphasizing specific characteristics of the body is a welcome diversion from a fashion industry fueled obsession
for 'perfect' bodies, the approach risks to brush over the fact that it is the specific characteristics of human bodies that play
crucial roles in the way individuals engage with the world.
It appears trivial to mention this but we all have bodies of different weight and height, we move at different gaits and speeds,
our hearing and eyesight may vary considerably, we take different postures when standing or sitting, we have different levels

of energy and we may even face different impairments that limit our capacity for engaging in information and other
behaviors.
Body height directly influences what we are able to see and grab. Supermarket shelves are therefore stocked according to
average body height and corresponding ease of reach, often resulting in the most convenient locations featuring the most
profitable goods. Strength of eyesight determines if one can read signs from a distance and body orientation and resulting
perspective determine what one can possibly see (Lueg 2014; see also Kwasnik 1992). Energy levels determine if one is
willing to walk across the room to investigate books spotted on a shelf. And what about the hip pain? Or the bag that is
getting heavier and heavier?
FALLACY: THE WORLD LOOKS THE SAME

Emphasizing commonalities among the way we see the world enables information behavior researchers to treat the way we
see the world as quite similar across individuals and even professions, at least similar enough to treat it as similar.
The previous section explains why what we 'see' is never exactly the same as anyone else's. Even relatively minor differences
may impact considerably on how we see the material world that is surrounding us and what that world affords in terms of
actions and opportunities. It goes without saying that this does not mean that there are not a lot of commonalities also.
There are other characteristics of human visual perception that are likely to impact on an individual's information behavior.
Certain cognitive phenomena, such as change blindness (Rensink et al 1997) or inattentional blindness (Mack 2003), impact
on how people perceive 'their' version of what is happening. Research regarding these phenomena suggests that even if a
subject 'looks' into a certain direction that does not mean that all the available information is consciously processed, which
makes analyzing their experience from an observer's point of view challenging even if technologies such as gaze-trackers are
utilized when collecting data (Lueg 2014).
Furthermore, task orientation may impact on how we look at the world. Tasks are a well researched topic in information
behavior but typically, little attention is paid to the fact that tasks that we work on or thoughts that play on our minds may
have an impact what we direct our gaze at. Rothkopf et al. (2007) explain that "[...] in the execution of extended natural
tasks, human gaze is directed toward regions of the visual scene that are determined primarily by the task requirements."
Gaze in turn determines to a significant extent what we pay attention to or, more broadly, what we see. This means that even
under very similar conditions, different people may pay attentions to different aspects of the world.

Emphasizing the impact of social practice would allow to assume that attention may be more focused in some highly trained
professions (e.g., air force spotters searching for airplane debris in the Southern Ocean or inspectors checking vaults; see
Veinot 2007 for details on the latter) but that would not be the case in most other communities of interest to information
behavior researchers.
FALLACY: YOUR WORLD IS THE SAME AS MINE

The links between embodiment and (information) behavior go even deeper than mentioned so far since the way we
experience the world (which is mediated by the corporeality of the body) induces physical changes in the body.
We are well aware of muscle build-up through physical training and likely to have heard of 're-wiring' the brain, a popular
expression referring to what is called brain plasticity (e.g., Doidge 2007).
Many of the aforementioned factors explored by Keilty (2012) including anxiety, desire, and pleasure in fact induce
physiological changes, just like being hungry comes with physiological changes affecting how we experience the world:
there is a reason as to why people should avoid doing their grocery shopping when feeling hungry (Malik et al 2008). Even
the way our bodies move has shown to have the capacity to influence the way we think: thought processes and the body's
motion are linked (e.g., Taylor et al 2009).
The discussion of the three fallacies shows that the boundary between physiological aspects and what historically is seen as
situational factors is blurry; one could argue the corporeality of the body aka embodiment does not allow for clean
distinctions between individual information styles and information behavior seen as social practice since practice is
inherently embodied (Cox 2012), or in other words: "[...] every human thought and action is adapted to the environment, that
is, situated, because what people perceive, how they conceive of their activity, and what they physically do develop together"
(Clancey 1997, cited in Lueg 2002).
WHAT ARE WE ACTUALLY DOING WHEN INVESTIGATING INFORMATION BEHAVIOR?

Information behavior research's estranged relationship with embodiment has been a topic for quite some time. Leveraging
Clancey's (1997) work on situated cognition we have long argued that as a community, we need to better understand how
information needs may emerge (and be resolved) in the situated, embodied interaction with one's environment.
Lloyd (2010) makes a similar point in the context of information literacy research when warning that "[d]isassociating the
body from the information experience, means that understanding the nature of this experience remains incomplete."

Few information behavior studies have attempted so far to probe in detail what individuals perceive even though perception
of a situation and its constraints and opportunities may differ considerably across subjects (see e.g., Lueg and Bidwell 2004
in the context of wayfinding).
Most of the models used in information behavior are what we call descriptive models (Lueg 2002), i.e., models that describe
information behavior from an observer's point of view. Studies are often limited to probing what people report they
perceived. Human capacity for introspection is limited though which means subjects tend to rationalize their own behavior
which is unlikely to lead to accurate representations of their behavior (Nisbett and Wilson 1977; see also Bidwell et al. 2005
for findings regarding questionnaires likely to test recall, i.e., a person's memory capacity, not necessarilyas intended
saliency of landmarks).
Sophisticated technologies such as gaze-trackers and psycho-physiological monitoring technologies coming from cognate
fields including psychology, neuroscience and ubiquitous computing are making their way into information science research
(e.g., Erdelez et al 2009; Balatsoukas and Ruthven 2012). Collecting behavioral data at a level of detail that is largely
unprecedented in library and information science will allow to deepen our understanding of the nature and role of
embodiment in information behavior and possibly revolutionize our understanding thereof.
CONCLUSIONS

The information behavior literature reveals quite a diverse range of approaches being used to study information behavior (see
Fisher et al 2005 for an overview), ranging from studies that abstract away from the specific bodily characteristics of their
subjects (e.g., Julien and Michels 2004) to studies that attempt to address at least to some extent embodied experiences (e.g.,
Anderson 2001, Lueg 2002, Veinot 2007, Lloyd 2009, Kelder and Lueg 2011, Keilty 2012).
The contribution of explicating what might be called an embodied information behavior perspective is twofold. First,
embodiment can be utilized as a vantage point to seek conceptual grounding for the rather diverse range of approaches in
information behavior research and to engage in healthy discussions across disciplinary boundaries. Such an embodied
information behavior perspective would to some extent resemble efforts to ground the social sciences in the cognitive
sciences (Sun 2012) with the rather important difference that appropriating concepts from cognitive science has a long
tradition in library and information science (see e.g., Ingwersen 1995). The challenge to library and information science
researchers is to present their own models and theories such that they become more accessible to researchers working in

cognate disciplines. Articulating in what way and on what level a particular approach contributes to advancing information
behavior research would also help.
Second, as mentioned earlier, an embodied information behavior perspective is not at odds with either individuality in
information behavior aka information styles or information behavior considered a social practice since both perspectives rely
heavily on the corporeality of the human body, as discussed in this paper. It is not an either-or question either since both
information styles and social practice influence simultaneously what we conceptualize, and perceive, as information
behavior. Rather the question is under what circumstances is using which perspective most helpful? We believe it is largely
an empirical question and we wish to encourage scholars to report both successful application of a certain perspective as well
as instances where they 'hit the wall' since the chosen perspective lacked something. Identifying what was lacking and
sharing that understanding with others would make a strong contribution to the body of work in information behavior
research.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

tba
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