I Is an Other: The Secret Life of Metaphor and How It Shapes the Way We See the World

by James Geary

  The word “sweet” gives a flavor of what Asch found. Eating something sweet, like chocolate, creates a pleasant physical sensation as well as a pleasant psychological state. These two things are so tightly linked that anything that occasions the psychological state becomes described in terms of the thing that occasioned the physical state. To paraphrase etymologist Owen Barfield, when a new psychological state comes into consciousness, it is described by the physical state that most closely resembles it.

  So, ancient Hebrew features “sweet to the soul”; Greek has “sweet laughter”; Hausa speakers say “I don’t taste sweetness” when they don’t feel well; and the Chinese warn that “sweet words” can be deceiving, just as too much chocolate can make you sick. Words like these “do not denote exclusively the ‘raw materials’ of experience188,” Asch observed. “They are also the names of concepts.”

  These concepts tend to be universal because our experience of our bodies in the world is pretty much universal, too. Still, there is plenty of room (mind your step around the physical metaphor “room”) for cultural variation in this kind of embodied cognition.

  In the West, people typically gesture in front of themselves when talking about the future. In one study, participants contemplating the future even tended to lean forward, while those recalling the past tended to lean backward189. It seems that we’re not in a position to decline our inclination to regard the future as something in front of us.

  In South America, however, speakers of Aymara gesture behind themselves when talking about the future190. Why? In Aymaran culture, the past is ahead because it is already known and can therefore be seen. The future, in contrast, is unknown and can’t be seen; therefore, it is located behind the speaker. Aymaran and Western embodied concepts of the past and future are contradictory, yet they are based on identical bodily metaphors.

  Lera Boroditsky, the cognitive scientist behind (make way for “behind,” yet another physical metaphor) the “Next Wednesday’s meeting” experiment, also studied the different space-related metaphors that English and Mandarin speakers use to think and talk about time191.

  The horizontal metaphors of “front = future” and “back = past” are common in both languages. But Mandarin speakers also use vertical metaphors to refer to chronological sequences. Events occurring earlier in time are said to be “up” (April is above May), while events occurring later in time are said to be “down” (May is under April). English speakers use similar expressions—Her birthday is coming up; the watch was handed down from generation to generation—but far fewer than Mandarin speakers. Mandarin’s vertical bias also shows up in the fact that the language is traditionally written from top to bottom in columns running from right to left.

  Boroditsky exposed speakers of both languages to horizontal or vertical primes—a picture of a black worm in front of a white worm, with an arrow indicating direction, accompanied by the sentence “The black worm is ahead of the white worm” or a picture of a black ball on top of a white ball accompanied by the sentence “The black ball is above the white ball.” She then asked participants temporal questions that did not involve spatial metaphors, such as “Is March earlier than April?” and “Is April later than March?” English speakers answered faster after horizontal primes; Mandarin speakers answered faster after vertical primes. Mandarin speakers answered faster after vertical primes despite the fact that they responded in English, suggesting that their preference for vertical primes was active regardless of the language in which they spoke.

  Boroditsky even trained English speakers to use vertical metaphors when talking about time. They learned to say “cars were invented above fax machines,” for example, and “Wednesday is lower than Tuesday.” Like Mandarin speakers, English speakers trained in this way started answering earlier/later questions faster after vertical primes, suggesting to Boroditsky that “differences in talking do indeed lead to differences in thinking192.”

  Boroditsky concluded that spatial metaphors affect how we think about time even when answering questions that contain no spatial metaphors. People “use spatial knowledge to think about time193 in a way that is consistent with (and encouraged by) the particular metaphors popular in their language,” she wrote.

  The same is true for all types of embodied metaphors. Just as we instinctively associate “up” with positive things and “down” with negative things, we associate “forward” with good things and “backward” with bad things. We routinely describe progress in difficult negotiations as “moving forward” and the return of unsavory personal practices as “going back to old habits.” Similarly, we are happiest when the best is still ahead and the worst is already behind us.

  These metaphors derive from the fact that our senses for the most part point in front of us. As a result, that is the direction from which our information about the world arrives. What is before us is clear and easily seen; what is behind us is obscure and inscrutable—unless, of course, you’re Aymaran. Our hands and feet also work much better when we’re going forward than when we’re going in reverse.

  If our bodies were different, though, our metaphors would be different, as Olaf Stapledon showed in Star Maker. Crabs walk sideways, for instance. If crabs could talk, they would undoubtedly describe progress in difficult negotiations as sidling toward agreement and express the hope for a better future by saying their best days are still beside them.

  Our bodies prime our metaphors, and our metaphors prime how we think and act.

  This kind of associative priming goes on all the time. In one study, researchers showed participants pictures of objects characteristic of a business setting: briefcases, boardroom tables, a fountain pen, men’s and women’s suits. Another group saw pictures of objects—a kite, sheet music, a toothbrush, a telephone—not characteristic of any particular setting. Both groups then had to interpret an ambiguous social situation, which could be described in several different ways. Those primed by pictures of business-related objects consistently interpreted the situation as more competitive194 than those who looked at pictures of kites and toothbrushes.

  This group’s competitive frame of mind asserted itself in a word completion task as well. Asked to complete fragments such as “wa_,” “_ight,” and “c__p___tive,” the business primes produced words like “war,” “fight,” and “competitive” more often than the control group, eschewing equally plausible alternatives like “was,” “light,” and “cooperative.” They also behaved less generously in a money-sharing game that rewards players the more equitably they dole out a small pot of cash.

  Anger is another of priming’s prime targets. “She’s about to blow her top,” “He’s all steamed up,” “She’s a hot head,” and “In the heat of the moment” are all variations on another Lakoff-Johnson conceptual metaphor—ANGER IS A HEATED FLUID IN A CONTAINER195. In fact, figurative descriptions of anger display some of the clearest synesthetic links between metaphorical expression and physical experience.

  The experience of physical heat is processed in the anterior insula, a brain region also active when anger-related concepts are in use and during the experience of emotional warmth. To find out if heat-related imagery triggered concepts of anger in people’s minds, psychologist Benjamin M. Wilkowski and collaborators showed subjects a set of ten anger-related words (“angry,” “annoyed,” “furious”) and a set of ten neutral words. Wilkowski wanted the neutral words to be as bland as possible, so he chose furniture-related terms like “armchair,” “bench,” and “bookcase.”

  Some subjects saw words presented along with imagery evocative of heat; flames flickered from the tops of letters, or words were displayed against the background of a campfire. Others saw words presented along with imagery evocative of cold; icicles dangled from some letters, or words were displayed partially concealed in snowdrifts.

  Feel the heat? Subjects recognize anger-related words much faster when they are accompanied by heat imagery than by cold imagery. Image courtesy of Benjamin M. Wilkows
ki.

  The participants’ task was simple: distinguish the anger-related words from the non-anger-related words as quickly as possible. The subjects did this much faster when the anger-related words were accompanied by heat imagery than by cold imagery. Even the word “angry” itself was recognized as anger-related faster when it was in flames than when it was covered in snow.

  Subjects also more often mistook furniture- for anger-related terms when the name of the piece of furniture was presented along with heat imagery. Other studies have shown that subjects are quicker to identify anger-related words after being primed with heat imagery196, such as a picture of a lava flow. Physical cues of heat, Wilkowski and colleagues concluded, really do prompt mental concepts of anger. And these metaphorical promptings have physical consequences, too.

  After priming subjects with either anger-related or furniture-related cues, Wilkowski and colleagues asked them to estimate the current room temperature or the temperature in an unfamiliar city. Those exposed to anger-related primes consistently gave hotter temperature estimates than those who were thinking about furniture. A similar effect was observed with faces. People exposed to heat-related imagery more often and more quickly categorized ambiguous facial expressions as angry, even though the expressions could have just as easily—and just as accurately—been categorized as sad or neutral.

  The correlations between our experience of heat and our concepts of anger, like the parallels between movement through space and passage through time, suggest that there is a link between the corporal and the metaphorical. We flip our lids when pent-up rage explodes, just as a boiling fluid overflows its container. We tend to lose our tempers more easily when we feel the heat, both physically and metaphorically.

  Colors197, too, have metaphorical significance as well as physical influence. We tend to routinely associate darker colors with strength and lighter colors with weakness, an association that holds across cultures.

  In one study, participants rated teams in darker professional football and hockey uniforms as nastier than teams in lighter uniforms198. The researchers wondered whether this association correlated with actual nasty acts, as measured by the number of penalties received. A review of penalties covering seventeen seasons, from 1970 through 1986, revealed that teams in darker uniforms committed more infractions than teams in lighter uniforms, and the penalties often involved prohibited aggressive acts, such as slashing.

  During the 1979–1980 season, the Pittsburgh Penguins hockey team provided optimum conditions for the study; players wore blue uniforms for the first half of the season and black uniforms for the second half. The team’s penalties averaged eight minutes when they wore blue and twelve minutes when they wore black. The players may have indeed committed more infractions while wearing black uniforms, or the referees may have merely been more wary and watchful of them in darker jerseys. Either way, the color’s metaphorical associations triggered a physical response.

  Red colors our judgments in different ways. Typically associated with aggressiveness, dominance, and sexual attractiveness, red often signals these very qualities in nature. A flushed face, especially among men, is associated with either anger or physical exertion. When we’re angry, it seems, we really do see red.

  An analysis of more than fifty seasons of an English soccer league showed that teams wearing red jerseys finished higher in the rankings and won more home games than teams in other colors. In another study, a static variation on the classic Heider and Simmel film, researchers showed volunteers differently colored circles and asked which would be most likely to prevail in a physical competition. And the winner was . . . red.

  In economics, red does not have very positive connotations. Market indices universally portray downticks in securities prices in red, while gains are always in green. If you are losing money, you’re in the red199 or drowning in red ink. Red is, of course, also the color of choice when correcting written work. Teachers use red pens to mark errors on student papers, and computer spell-check programs typically underline misspelled words in red. One study found that people using red rather than blue pens200 not only awarded lower grades when marking essays, but also came up with more error-related terms in a word completion task like the one used in the business priming experiment. The use of red pens, the researchers concluded, increased the accessibility of concepts related to failure and poor performance.

  These associations may be due to red’s effect on the autonomic nervous system, raising pulse and blood pressure, increasing muscle tension, and stimulating sweat glands. Red tends to promote involuntary subjective impressions of stress, leading people to make decisions under greater perceived pressure. Which is why some stock traders refuse to own or even touch a red pen, let alone write with one, and some Massachusetts school districts are issuing teachers pens with purple ink.

  The connection between our bodies and our metaphors may be explained by the fact that the same brain areas that are active when carrying out an action are active when mentally simulating that action, as research on mirror neurons has shown. The neural systems responsible for physical disgust201, for instance, overlap with those responsible for moral disgust.

  Just as traders get stressed by seeing red, our heart and breathing rates accelerate when we see pictures of threatening objects202 as well as when we mentally visualize those objects. The brain’s visual circuits respond regardless of whether we see something with our own eyes or in our own minds.203

  Researchers in one study, in which participants had to retrace a memorized path with their eyes closed, found that mental simulation was as effective as physical practice in walking the simplest routes204. Even the duration of actual and simulated strolls tends to be roughly the same. When test subjects are asked to imagine walking specific distances205, the time it takes them to reach the imagined goal is equivalent to the time it would take to actually walk that distance.

  The upshot of all this research is: thinking is a kind of simulated interaction with the world206, a metaphorical engagement that makes what we imagine more realistic. Mental images can have the same effect on the body and the mind as actual physical things. And metaphors are mental image makers par excellence (another physical metaphor, by the way, from the Latin excellere via French, meaning “to rise above,” “to project from,” or “to stick out”). Metaphors are experience’s body doubles, standing in for actual objects and events.

  To find out if we do understand figurative language by mentally simulating the physical actions alluded to in metaphor207, psychologist Raymond Gibbs Jr. put participants in front of a computer screen on which various icons appeared. Each icon represented a simple bodily action, such as throwing, stamping, pushing, kicking, or grasping. Whenever an icon flashed on the screen, subjects had to perform the physical action displayed.

  After that, a string of words appeared, half of which were conventional metaphors related to the action just performed. If subjects had just been asked to kick, for example, the words “kick around an idea” might appear. The other word strings were random combinations that made neither literal nor metaphorical sense. Participants had to decide as quickly as possible which was which. If physical actions matched metaphorical concepts, Gibbs theorized, then subjects should be able to verify phrases as meaningful faster when they first performed a related action. And that’s exactly what he found.

  The phrase “kick around an idea” was identified faster after subjects actually kicked. Similarly, people were faster to recognize “grasp the concept” after actually making grasping motions. “Performing an action facilitates understanding208 of a metaphoric phrase containing that action word,” Gibbs and his team concluded, which suggests that the same skeins of neurons are involved in understanding a metaphor and performing a related movement. Other experiments have delivered corresponding results: performing an action not only facilitates the understanding of related metaphors, but also facilitates the accessibility of the concepts behind those metaphors. These findings bu
ild on research showing that the literal meanings of verbs like “kick” and “walk” activate neurons in the brain regions involved in the physical actions of kicking and walking209. In the brain, the networks for language, action, and metaphorical thinking overlap.

  Researchers asked participants to play the children’s game rock-paper-scissors, a ruse to assess whether making a fist (the “rock” hand position in the game) made the concept of power more accessible210. They found that subjects identified power-related words (“rule,” “win,” “mighty,” “strong”) faster when forming the “rock” position than when forming the “paper” or “scissors” positions. The concept of power, the team concluded, was more accessible to those who made a fist than to those who did not.

  Gesture is, in fact, another area where metaphor and the body intersect. Shaking your fist at someone is a metaphorical warning as well as a physical threat. “If language was given to men to conceal their thoughts211, then gesture’s purpose was to disclose them,” wrote historian of the hand John Napier in his aptly titled book Hands. A metaphorical gesture is worth a thousand words.

  The “nose thumb212”—placing the thumb against the nose and wiggling the fingers—means mockery or disrespect practically everywhere. Its earliest known use was in the fifteenth century, when it might have derived from the practice of making satirical wax effigies with elaborately elongated noses.