The metaphor police: A case study of the role of metaphor in explanation

Abstract

While many scholars have pointed to the role of metaphor in explanation, relatively little experimental research has examined whether and how metaphors are used and understood in everyday explanatory discourse. Across 3 experiments, we investigated the nature and function of metaphor in explanation by drawing on a real-world example where the terms guardian and warrior were used to metaphorically explain the role of police officers. We found, first, that the associations participants brought to mind for these concepts differed depending on whether they had previously answered questions about law enforcement (e.g., associations for warrior emphasized aggression and violence rather than strength and bravery when participants had previously answered questions about policing). Second, people were almost evenly split in their judgment of which metaphor was more appropriate to explain the role of law enforcement; this preference was highly predictive of beliefs related to policing and the criminal justice system. Third, and most important, using these metaphors to explain the job of policing causally influenced attitudes toward law enforcement in a metaphorcongruent manner (i.e., exposure to the guardian metaphor led to more positive attitudes), a finding that could not be accounted for by basic lexical priming. These studies complement existing work that has identified metaphor as a mechanism for representing abstract concepts, but also highlight the communicative and explanatory, rather than representational, functions of metaphor by showing that metaphors can encapsulate and convey an array of structured attitudes and beliefs.Keywords Metaphor . Explanation . Analogy . Persuasion . Reasoning . ConceptsExplanations without metaphor would be difficult if not impossible, for in order to describe the unknown, we must resort to concepts that we know and understand, and that is the essence of a metaphor-an unusual juxtaposition of the familiar and the unfamiliar. Earl R. MacCormac When you are trying to explain something complex or abstract to someone else, it often helps to make a vivid comparison to a simpler and more familiar domain. In other words, it often helps to use a metaphor or analogy. An apt metaphor can quickly establish common ground between communicative partners, add emotional weight to the discussion, and enable the listener to use their prior knowledge of a source domain to organize their understanding and reasoning about the target of explanation (Clark, 1996;Thibodeau & Boroditsky, 2011. Take, for example, some explanations of the nature of explanation itself: in order to highlight the ubiquity of explanation in everyday experience, Wilson and Keil (2000) Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.3758/s13423-016-1192-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. Psychon Bull Rev (2017) 24:1375-1386 DOI 10.3758/s13423-016-1192 remarked, BExplanation is a river that flows through human life^(p. 87). And in a chapter that appeare...

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