Summary of a paper: Metaphors We Think With: The Role of Metaphor in Reasoning by Paul H. Thibodeau, Lera Boroditsky published in http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0016782 This summary is short and servers as an introduction to a discussion event: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=207343529339058

1. graduate student,
department of psychology,
stanford university
Paul Thibodeau
&
Lera Boroditsky
assistant professor,
department of psychology,
stanford university
@leraboroditsky
Summary by Konrad
Juszczyk for REMAT+
meeting: October, 27 2011
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2. Oxford-style debate
Do the languages we speak shape the way we think?
Lera Boroditsky represented the “pro” side
"Pro" won by reader vote (78%)
Dec, 13-23 2010
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3. Metaphors We Think With: The Role of Metaphor in Reasoning
The Public Library of Science (PLoS) NEW! (Feb, 23 2011)
Open access journal (http://www.plosone.org)
PLoS ONE features reports of original research
from all disciplines within science and medicine.
By not excluding papers on the basis of subject
area, PLoS ONE facilitates the discovery of the
connections between papers whether within or
between disciplines.
http://d.pr/72C6 (download the paper from plosone)
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4. General questions to text:
What is the role of metaphor in reasoning?
How changing the metaphor may influence
understanding the text and decision making?
How people explain their understanding of text?
How we can influence people with a metaphor?
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5. Metaphors we think with?
Critics argue that very little work has empirically
demonstrated that metaphors in language influence
how people think about and solve real-world
problems [14].
[14] Pinker S (2007) The stuff of thought: Language
as a window in human nature. New York, NY:
Penguin Books.
PT & LB: do we reason about complex social
issues in the same way that we talk about them?
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6. CRIME AS A...
virus beast
dealing with a
crime like with
virus epidemic animal attack
Might
talking
about
crime
as
a
beast/virus
lead
people
to
propose
dealing
with
a
crime
problem
the
same
way
as
one
would
deal
with
a
literal
wild
animal
attack/virus
epidemic?
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7. 28 participants in survey
Imagine...
„virus „wild
inflecting beast
the city” preying
•investigate the source of the virus on a city”
•develop a vaccine
•encourage residents to follow
better hygiene practices describe the best way
to solve the problem
What if a virus or a beast •capture the beast
would be used as a •organize a hunting party
metaphor of a crime? •stop it from ravaging the city
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8. report about increasing crime
rates in the City of Addison
infecting & plaguing preying & lurking
participants proposed
different solutions
investigate the catch and jail
root causes and criminals and
treat the problem enact harsher
by enacting enforcement
social reform laws
EXPERIMENT 1
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9. Crime is a virus/beast
ravaging the city of Addison
virus beast
participants proposed
different solutions
investigate the catch and jail
root causes and criminals and
treat the problem enact harsher
by enacting enforcement
social reform laws
EXPERIMENT 2
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10. participants were asked to
provide a synonym to the word
virus beast
Crime is ravaging
the city of Addison
This disconnected lexical prime did not yield differences in people’s crime-fighting
suggestions, revealing that metaphors act as more than just isolated words – their
power appears to come from participating in elaborated knowledge structures.
EXPERIMENT 3
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11. Crime is a virus/beast
ravaging the city of Addison
the metaphoric frame was presented
in the first sentence of the report
virus beast
participants were given the
opportunity to gather further
information about the issue
participants chose to look at information that
was consistent with the metaphorical frame
EXPERIMENT 4
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12. Crime is a virus/beast
ravaging the city of Addison
virus beast
the metaphoric frame was presented
in last sentence of the report
late metaphorical framing had no effect on
people’s crime-related information foraging
EXPERIMENT 5
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13. Covert power of metaphor
When given the opportunity to identify
the most influential aspect of the crime
report, participants ignore the metaphor.
Instead, they cite the crime statistics as
being influential in their reasoning.
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14. Participants’ political affiliation
At the end of Experiments 2–5, we asked participants
to report their political affiliation (Democrat,
Independent, or Republican) and their gender.
We found a predictable relationship between political
affiliation and the tendency to emphasize
enforcement in one’s response.
A logistic regression revealed political affiliation to be
a significant predictor of people’s crime- fighting
suggestions: comparing a model with political
affiliation included as a predictor to a constant-only
model was statistically significant.
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15. Gender as a predictor?
We also found systematic differences by gender:
46% of responses from men and 38% of responses
from women suggested enforcement.
Comparing a logistic regression model with gender
included as a predictor to a constant- only model
was statistically significant.
Men and women were equally influenced by the
metaphorical frames.
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16. one conclusion is...
The studies presented in this paper demonstrate
that even minimal (one-word) metaphors can
significantly shift people’s representations and
reasoning about important real-world do- mains.
These findings suggest that people don’t have a
single integrated representation of complex issues
like crime, but rather rely on a patchwork of
(sometimes disconnected or inconsistent)
representations and can (without realizing it)
dynamically shift between them when cued in
context.
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