by James Geary
In one experiment specifically designed to explore the priming effects of the “nation = body” metaphor247, a group of participants read an article, ostensibly from a popular science magazine, describing airborne bacteria as ubiquitous and harmful to human health. Another group read a similar article describing airborne bacteria as ubiquitous but harmless to human health.
Both groups then read parallel articles about the history of U.S. domestic issues other than immigration. The only difference between the two articles was that one contained “nation = body” metaphors (e.g., “After the Civil War, the United States experienced an unprecedented growth spurt, and is scurrying to create new laws that will give it a chance to digest the millions of innovations”) and the other did not (e.g., “After the Civil War, the United States experienced an unprecedented period of innovation, and efforts are now under way to create new laws to control the millions of innovations”).
Both groups then answered two questionnaires. The first gauged their agreement with statements about immigration and the minimum wage (e.g., “It’s important to increase restrictions on who can enter the United States” and “It’s important to increase the minimum wage in the United States”). The second assessed their concerns about contamination (e.g., “To what extent did the article on airborne bacteria increase your desire to protect your body from harmful substances?”). Subjects who read the article describing airborne bacteria as harmful reported being more concerned about contamination. No surprise there.
But the same people also expressed more negative views about immigration when America was metaphorically described as a body. Those who read the more neutral description of U.S. domestic issues had more positive views of immigration, even though they also read the article describing airborne bacteria as harmful. Both groups’ views about the minimum wage were about the same because, unlike immigration, the “nation = body” metaphor does not attend that issue. The researchers concluded that manipulating a person’s attitude toward one issue (personal health) affects that person’s attitude toward an entirely unrelated issue (immigration)—if the two issues are metaphorically linked.
If you increase a person’s concern about contamination and then prime the “nation = body” metaphor, opinions about immigration change. More literal descriptions do not have this effect. And, like the subjects in the Lhermitte and Bargh experiments, people are not aware of the shift.
The body politic is a metaphorical battleground, with different conceptions of social issues vying to colonize public opinion. These metaphors tend to become more propitious, or more pernicious, the more they are repeated. In The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction, Emily Martin chronicled historical metaphors of menstruation to reveal the hidden assumptions gestating in supposedly factual descriptions. Noting that men have written most of the medical textbooks on the subject, Martin cites one standard reference work as follows:
When fertilization fails to occur248, the endometrium is shed, and a new cycle starts. This is why it used to be taught that “menstruation is the uterus crying for lack of a baby.”
Martin argues that metaphors like this, repeated in textbook after textbook, frame menstruation in terms of failure—specifically, the failure to reproduce—and hence contributed to historically negative views of the process. The same was true for menopause since, if menstruation is the failure to reproduce once, menopause is the failure to reproduce forever.
Medical texts therefore described this stage in a woman’s life as a pathological state rather than a natural part of aging. “At every point in the system, functions ‘fail’ and falter249,” Martin writes. “Follicles ‘fail to muster the strength’ to reach ovulation. As functions fail, so do the members of the system decline: ‘breasts and genital organs gradually atrophy,’ ‘wither,’ and become ‘senile.’ ”
Susan Sontag made a similar point in her books dissecting the metaphors of cancer and HIV/AIDS, which, she noted, usually depict the diseases in terms of military invasions and alien contaminations. Sontag argued that the associations triggered by these metaphorical descriptions create an unhelpful and unjustified sense of fear. “Illness is not a metaphor250,” Sontag wrote. “The most truthful way of regarding illness—and the healthiest way of being ill—is one most purified of, most resistant to, metaphoric thinking.”
But, as Glucksberg’s Stroop test showed, metaphorical thinking is hard to resist, especially since so much of it takes place below the surface. Psychologists Gary Sherman and Gerald Clore conducted moral Stroop tests251 to demonstrate the influence of metaphorical associations on some of our most fundamental judgments.
Sherman and Clore showed subjects fifty words suggesting immorality (“greed,” “cheat,” and “liar”) and fifty words suggesting morality (“honesty,” “justice,” and “virtuous”), each of which was randomly presented in either black or white. Participants had to name as quickly as possible the color of the ink in which the words were printed. Subjects were able to name the color faster when the immoral words were printed in black and the moral words were printed in white. Seeing the word “greed” in white ink, for example, created the same kind of cognitive dissonance as seeing the word “green” in blue ink.
In a variation on the experiment, some participants copied out by hand an unethical statement. Those who copied out the statement identified words in black faster than those who did not copy out the statement.
The researchers concluded that our moral judgments are closely linked to our concepts of darkness and light. This light-dark nexus is evident in metaphors like “She’s pure as the driven snow” or “He’s whiter than white.” It shines through in clichés that describe periods of trouble and strife as “dark times” and periods of peace and prosperity as “sunlit uplands.” It also explains why brides traditionally dress in white and why in fairy tales heroic knights inevitably arrive on white steeds.
A study involving participants from twenty different countries252—including Japan, Germany, Afghanistan, and Thailand—consistently found that the color white had positive associations and the color black had negative associations. “Just as the word ‘lemon’ activates ‘yellow,’253 so too do immoral words activate ‘black’ and moral words activate ‘white,’ ” Sherman and Clore wrote.
Clore and a different research team performed another metaphorical Stroop test, this time varying the moral and immoral words by brightness. Participants identified the moral words more quickly when they were brighter and the negative words more quickly when they were darker. No surprise then that we see a glimmer of hope when the future looks bright and an aura of gloom surrounds those who’ve gone over to the dark side.
People automatically assume, the Clore group concluded, that bright objects are good and dark objects are bad254. Studies even show that children tend to assume that black boxes contain negative objects255 and white boxes contain positive objects.
These associations carry over into our beliefs and behaviors, too. Priming studies show that people subliminally primed with black faces are more hostile256 during a competitive game than those primed with white faces. Dutch researchers performing a similar experiment found that whites subliminally exposed to black faces257 had more negative attitudes toward blacks than whites who were not exposed to faces of any color.
In another experiment, Emory University psychologist Drew Weston and other researchers produced two different versions of a putative campaign advertisement for Barack Obama258. One version featured a light-skinned black family and the other featured a darker-skinned black family. Subjects who had seen the version with the darker-skinned family were less likely to express support for Obama than those who had seen the version with the light-skinned family.
Results like these correlate with statistics on discrimination. Stanford psychologist Jennifer Eberhardt, for example, has found that, in cases involving a black defendant and a white murder victim, jurors are influenced by the extent to which the defendant appears stereotypi
cally black, defined as having a broad nose, thick lips, and dark skin. Darker-skinned African-American defendants are more than twice as likely to get the death penalty259 than lighter-skinned African-American defendants for equivalent crimes involving white victims.
Eberhardt and Aneeta Rattan, another Stanford psychologist, carried out research showing that white people primed to think about blacks, by reading a list of names regarded as stereotypically African-American260, are more likely to notice a gorilla in a short video clip. The clip is based on a video (which can be seen at http://viscog.beckman.illinois.edu/flashmovie/15.php) of a group of students passing around basketballs. The viewer’s task: count only the passes made by players in white shirts, excluding the passes made by players in black shirts. About halfway through the clip, a person dressed in a gorilla suit nonchalantly strolls through the middle of the group. Less than half of viewers, who are intent on counting the passes, typically tend to notice the gorilla. In the Eberhardt and Rattan experiment, though, white participants primed with stereotypically African-American names noticed the gorilla more often than those primed with stereotypically white names. The researchers concluded that metaphorical associations—even erroneous and offensive ones like that between African Americans and apes—can determine what we see and, if not countered, can work to reinforce nonconscious prejudices.
The “Macbeth effect261” is another example of how metaphorical associations exert a kind of unconscious gravitational pull on our actions. In this experiment, participants read stories containing either moral or immoral scenarios. Those who read stories about immoral acts were more likely to buy cleaning products and to take an antiseptic wipe after the testing session ended. The researchers even found that the act of washing their hands alleviated some of the uneasiness subjects felt after reading stories about immorality. The simple act of hand cleaning has also been found to wash away regrets about past decisions262. Thus, a perceived threat to moral purity can prompt actual physical cleansing, just as in Shakespeare’s play Lady Macbeth tries in vain to scrub the stain of murder from her hands. And clean hands can promote a clean conscience, too, in contrast to Lady Macbeth’s experience.
Researchers at the University of Toronto put undergraduates in a brand-new lab263, asking half of them to clean their hands with an antiseptic wipe before touching a keyboard or mouse. They then asked all the participants to rate issues such as smoking, illegal drug use, and pornography on an 11-point scale, ranging from “very moral” to “very immoral.” Those who had cleaned their hands rated the issues as more immoral than those who had not cleaned their hands, leading the research team to conclude that the metaphorical association between cleanliness and virtue primed participants who used an antiseptic wipe to deliver harsher moral judgments.
Another experiment, a kind of olfactory Stroop test, found that those exposed to citrus-scented cleaner264 not only identified cleaning-related words more rapidly but also kept their direct environment tidier during a subsequent snack break. Another study found that subjects in a room perfumed with citrus-scented Windex265 shared more of the money they won in an anonymous trust game than those in an unscented room.
Even the relative brightness of a room can influence actions. In one study, participants in a dim room cheated more often266 in the anonymous trust game than did participants in a brightly lit room, while participants wearing sunglasses behaved more selfishly than those wearing clear glasses.
Studies like these suggest that metaphors like “light = moral” and “dark = immoral” or “clean = good” and “dirty = evil” are more than just rhetorical devices. The associations that cluster around these concepts influence our judgments and behaviors. Darkness summons thoughts of immorality while also encouraging more immoral acts; clean smells make the concept of virtue more accessible while also prompting more virtuous behavior.
It is impossible to refrain altogether from metaphorical thinking, as Sontag so passionately urged. It is, however, imperative to carefully and consciously choose the metaphors we do use—and to be vigilant about those used by others. As Cultural Logic’s work has shown, different metaphors can prompt very different attitudes and behaviors.
Metaphorical choices don’t just reflect opinions and actions; they help shape them. So becoming aware of which metaphors are at work—and why—provides an essential reality check in political debate. Bringing metaphorical meanings to the surface enables us to evaluate them, and to decide for ourselves the extent of their influence.
George Orwell believed the political chaos that he felt characterized his time was connected to the decay of language. “If thought corrupts language267,” he wrote, “language can also corrupt thought.” He had a particular aversion to political language, describing it as “designed to make lies sound truthful268 and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
The next time you feel yourself being blown away by a political slogan or borne aloft on a flight of impassioned rhetoric, take a moment to mull over the metaphors. After examining the motives behind the metaphor and the associations it raises, you may or may not be just as uplifted. Unlike the subjects in the Lhermitte and Bargh experiments, though, you will definitely know how the effect was achieved.
To stop the decay of language, and thereby help prevent politics from descending into chaos, Orwell urged us to heed Nietzsche’s warning by taking Shelley’s advice—keep political debate vitally metaphorical:
A newly invented metaphor assists thought269 by evoking a visual image, while on the other hand a metaphor which is technically “dead” (e.g., iron resolution) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally be used without loss of vividness. But in between these two classes there is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves.
Worn-out political metaphors belong in the dustbin of history because language that saves people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves also saves people the trouble of thinking for themselves. And that’s the first step on the slippery slope to chaos. In confronting intractable political issues, it makes all the difference in the world whether the next step is sudden death or extra innings.
Metaphor and Pleasure
Experience Is a Comb That Nature Gives to Bald Men
Giambattista Vico was born and lived most of his life in Naples. When he was seven years old, he fell headfirst from a ladder, injuring himself so badly that it took him three years to recover. During that time he was unable to attend school, so Vico’s father undertook the young boy’s education at home. Vico the younger eventually went on to graduate with a degree in law from the University of Naples, where he became professor of rhetoric. He died in 1744 at the age of seventy-six.
In New Science, Vico set himself the modest task of explaining all of human history, from the evolution of speech and writing to the rise and fall of empires. As a professor of rhetoric, Vico was particularly interested in language, and he believed that metaphor played a formative role not just in the evolution of language but also in the advance of civilization.
Vico identified three historical ages—the age of gods, the age of heroes, and the age of men. Each age had a specific form of language adapted to its specific stage of human development. The earliest language dated from a time “when pagan peoples had just embraced civilization270,” Vico wrote:
We find that it was a mute and wordless language that used gestures or physical objects bearing a natural relationship to the ideas they wanted to signify. The second language used heroic emblems—such as similes, comparisons, images, metaphors, and descriptions of nature—as the principle lexicon of its heroic language, which was spoken in the age when heroes ruled. The third language was the human or civilized language which used vocabulary agreed upon by popular convention.
Vico noted the link between gesture and language long before mirror-neuron theorists Rizzolatti and
Arbib, and he was also keenly sensitive to how ordinary speech is filled with figuration. “In all languages expressions for inanimate objects271 employ metaphors derived from the human body and its parts, or from human senses and emotions,” he wrote, listing common examples such as the lip of a pitcher, the neck of a bottle, the mouth of a river.
Vico was also convinced that he had discovered the “universal principle of etymology272 . . . Words are transferred from physical objects and their properties to signify what is conceptual and spiritual.” His views anticipate much of the conceptual metaphor and embodied cognition theories prevalent today.
Vico rarely left Naples. He endured extreme poverty and poor health. His work in philology and philosophy—and his ideas about metaphor—were largely ignored. That is, until 1825, when the Italian revolutionary Gioacchino de Prati introduced English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge to Vico’s New Science.
For a period of two years during the mid-1820s Prati, who was living in exile in England, visited Coleridge about once a week in Highgate in north London. Coleridge lived in the home of James Gilman, a surgeon, in part as a way to control his addiction to laudanum, a mixture of alcohol and opium derivatives.
Prati was a regular at the Gilmans’ Thursday evening soirées, where Coleridge held forth on politics, religion, literature, and science. The two men also took long walks in the Gilmans’ garden or sat in Coleridge’s study to chat. Coleridge, famed for his verbosity, did most of the talking. Prati listened in rapt attention, comparing the poet’s conversation to the dialogues of Plato.
“Coleridge expanded himself273 in a torrent of eloquence,” Prati wrote in his autobiography. “All around him were so taken up with his speech, that seldom a word or a whisper was heard during the whole time he was addressing the company . . . The finest, loftiest ideas, pouring forth amidst the most blooming poetical phrases, allegories, and types, now spiced with Socratic irony, now strengthened by close and all-penetrating argumentation, afforded me an intellectual banquet, nowhere to be met either here or in any part of the continent.”
