When Do Natural Language Metaphors Influence Reasoning? A Follow-Up Study to Thibodeau and Boroditsky (2013)

Abstract

In this article, we offer a critical view of Thibodeau and Boroditsky who report an effect of metaphorical framing on readers' preference for political measures after exposure to a short text on the increase of crime in a fictitious town: when crime was metaphorically presented as a beast, readers became more enforcement-oriented than when crime was metaphorically framed as a virus. We argue that the design of the study has left room for alternative explanations. We report four experiments comprising a follow-up study, remedying several shortcomings in the original design while collecting more encompassing sets of data. Our experiments include three additions to the original studies: (1) a non-metaphorical control condition, which is contrasted to the two metaphorical framing conditions used by Thibodeau and Boroditsky, (2) text versions that do not have the other, potentially supporting metaphors of the original stimulus texts, (3) a pre-exposure measure of political preference (Experiments 1–2). We do not find a metaphorical framing effect but instead show that there is another process at play across the board which presumably has to do with simple exposure to textual information. Reading about crime increases people's preference for enforcement irrespective of metaphorical frame or metaphorical support of the frame. These findings suggest the existence of boundary conditions under which metaphors can have differential effects on reasoning. Thus, our four experiments provide converging evidence raising questions about when metaphors do and do not influence reasoning.

The Effects of Metaphorical Framing on Political Persuasion: A Systematic Literature Review

“…Contradicting results were also reported across studies. Consider studies conducted by two groups of scholars who examined the effect of two metaphorical frames, namely crime is beast and crime is a virus, on policy preferences (REA: Steen, Reijnierse, & Burgers, 2014;Thibodeau & Boroditsky, 2011. First, Boroditsky (2011, 2013) reported that the crime is a beast frame made people prefer enforcement strategies to reform strategies.…”

“…4-7, 2013REA). Consequently, Steen et al (2014), conducted a series of follow-up experiments, in which they compared the effects of the same metaphorical frames to a non-metaphorical control frame. They found no framing effects (Steen et al, 2014, pp.…”

Developing, testing and interpreting Deliberate Metaphor Theory

“…Ng and Koller, 2013). It is true that addressees do not always verbally pick up on such intentions of deliberate metaphor use --but often they do, in face-to-face interaction (e.g., Tay, 2013) and in media use (e.g., Musolff, 2004;cf. Steen, 2013).…”

Special issue on the political impact of metaphors

“…Yet, a recent extended replication by Steen et al (2014) did not come to the same conclusions. The authors show that the impact might be due to simple exposure to textual information, rather than metaphors per se.…”

“…In their article, linguists W. Gudrun Reijnierse, Tina Krennmayr, Gerard J. Steen and communication scientist Christian Burgers explore "How viruses and beasts affect our opinions (or not): The role of extendedness in metaphorical framing". Following on the on-going debate between Boroditsky's studies (2011, 2013) and their own work (Steen et al, 2014) and the existence of contrasting findings, they investigate whether extending the metaphorical frame of the 'Crime is a virus' metaphor, on the one hand, and of the 'Crime is a beast' on the other, leads to a differentiated impact on the perceived effectiveness of policy measures related to crime solving. More specifically, they analysed to what extent these respective extended metaphorical frames led the subjects to choose either reform-oriented policies (hypothesised as being in line with the former) or enforcement-oriented ones (hypothesised as being in line with the latter).…”