The Metaphor That Ate A City: How Figurative Language Is More Persuasive Than Political Ideology

Is crime a virus, or a beast?

We all like to think that we respond primarily to facts and statistics when we're analyzing controversial problems, but some recent research suggests that we don't -- and that we're much more swayed by figurative language, even when we think we're responding to cold, hard facts.

In fact, the use of a metaphor to frame a problem seems to affect how we diagnose and solve the problem even more strongly than our own self-professed political ideologies.


Researchers Lera Boroditsky and Paul Thibodeau tested this tendency when they gave people one of two articles about crime in a fictional city, Addison. The articles contained identical facts, figures, and data -- in fact, the entire articles were identical except for a single phrase. In one of the articles, readers were told that crime was a "wild beast preying on the city" -- in the other article, crime was a "virus infecting the city."

What happened?  Something strange.

The group that read that crime was a beast "was much more likely to seek solutions about enforcement and punishment, so they would say, bring in more police, build more jails," said Boroditsky, in an interview for the radio show On The Media. The virus group, on the other hand, "focused on social reform," recommending that we "improve the education system or ... have better after-school programs."

These are responses typical of conservatives (enforcement + punishment) and liberals (social reform), but strangely, the effect of the metaphor on people's thinking was twice as strong as their political ideology; so Democrats who read about the 'beast' were more likely to choose a 'conservative' strategy -- punishment -- and Republicans who read about the 'virus' were more likely to opt for the 'liberal' solution of social reforms.

Yet very few respondents believed that they were affected by the metaphor.  When they were asked to identify the parts of the article that influenced their decisions, only 3% highlighted the metaphor.  Nearly everyone else claimed their decision was based entirely on the statistics.

The bigger problem this work suggests is this: it is almost impossible for us to think about important problems without using metaphors -- the large, complex entanglements in our political, social, and environmental lives are almost impossible for us to process without resorting to analogy.

This is true even when we think about public education, or the day-to-day process of teaching and learning.  Are we, as teachers, coaches?  Performers? Sergeants?  Sages?  Does learning happen by 'pouring' information in to finite skull-cases, which can overflow?  Are new ideas like plants, that germinate from seeds, nurtured by caring and solicitous gardeners? Do students 'build' or 'construct' their own learning, like snapping new legos on to a pre-existing structure?  Is our classroom best conceived of as a business?  If so, is it an assembly-line factory, or a Google-like high-tech start-up with a priority on personal freedom, creativity, and an open buffet?

This also gives us a powerful tool when we are framing problems -- for ourselves, our students, and even the politicians that represent us.  And with great power comes great responsibility -- at least that's what the superheroes say.

You can read the transcript of the interview with Boroditsky, or listen to the actual podcast, at this link: Does Metaphorical Framing Really Work?  

If you'd like to read Boroditsky and Thibodeau's write-up of their experiments, you can read Metaphors We Think With: The Role of Metaphor in Reasoning.

Images:

Litherel: Demon Form. Digital image. Demonata. Web. 12 Oct. 2011.

HIV Virus. Digital image. Health Care and Pharmacy News. Hospifarma. Web. 12 Oct. 2011.