The Consequences of a Metaphoric Mind Seminar

Event details

The majority of work on conceptual metaphors in social and personality psychology has focused on specific metaphor effects. Specifically, these types studies show that priming a concept (e.g., anger) leads to metaphorically consistent outcomes (e.g., perceiving the colour red). However, relatively little work has focused on the consequences of metaphoric thinking in general. Conceptual metaphor theory states that metaphors help people understand abstract or intangible constructs (e.g., emotion). My recent work, which is the focus of this talk, sought to directly test this assertion. First, I will describe how my colleagues and I created and validated a metaphor usage measure (MUM). I will then present data suggesting that metaphor effects are strongest among those scoring high in metaphor use. After establishing the usefulness of the MUM, I will provide evidence that metaphor use is helpful for understanding. Specifically, I will show that the MUM predicts emotional understanding and emotionally intelligent responses to daily life events. In addition, I will describe work suggesting that metaphor usage training is useful for reducing trait-like negative affect and, perhaps, depression. In closing, I will briefly describe my perspective on the current state of metaphor research and present my vision for future work in this area.