Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
http://emr.sagepub.com
Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com
On behalf of:
Additional services and information for Emotion Review can be found at:
Email Alerts: http://emr.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts
Subscriptions: http://emr.sagepub.com/subscriptions
Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav
Permissions: http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
Citations http://emr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/1/2/129
Emotion Review
Vol. 1, No. 2 (Apr. 2009) 129139
2009 SAGE Publications and
The International Society
for Research on Emotion
ISSN 1754-0739
DOI: 10.1177/1754073908100438
http://emr.sagepub.com
Abstract
Emotional experiences are often described in metaphoric language. A major question in linguistics and cognitive science is whether
such metaphoric linguistic expressions reflect a deeper principle of cognition. Are abstract concepts structured by the embodied,
sensorimotor domains that we use to describe them? This review presents the argument for conceptual metaphors of affect and
summarizes recent findings from empirical studies. These findings show that, consistent with the conceptual metaphor account,
the associations between affect and physical domains such as spatial position, musical pitch, brightness, and size which are captured in linguistic metaphors also influence performance on attention, memory and judgment tasks. Despite this evidence, a number of concerns with metaphor as an account of affect representation are considered.
Keywords
affect, concept, linguistics, metaphor, representation
Metaphoric Representation
Recent research in cognitive, affective, and neuro-science has
raised new questions about the nature of concepts. Influenced by
developments in logic and artificial intelligence, early cognitive
Author note: This work was supported by a grant from the University of Richmond Arts and Sciences Faculty Research Committee. I thank Matthew Crawford, Barbara Luka, Art
Glenberg, Paula Niedenthal and anonymous reviewers for their comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript.
Corresponding author: L. Elizabeth Crawford, Department of Psychology, University of Richmond, Richmond, VA 23173, USA. Email: lcrawfor@richmond.edu
Downloaded from http://emr.sagepub.com by Andreina Fagndez on February 18, 2010
130
psychology characterized concepts as abstract, amodal representations, such as semantic networks or feature lists. As
Barsalou notes, such accounts were attractive because they
were able to model important conceptual functions, such as the
type-token distinction, categorical inference, productivity and
propositions (Barsalou, Simmons, Barbey, & Wilson, 2003,
p. 85). In addition, they could be formalized and implemented
in computer programs. Despite these advantages, such abstraction raises the important question of how such symbols are connected to their meanings. If concepts are amodal symbols, then
cognition is a closed loop of these symbols, with the meaning
of each defined only by other symbols. This problem is captured by Harnads (1990) Chinese dictionary thought experiment. In this reformulation of Searles (1980) Chinese room
problem, Harnad ponders how one can learn Chinese from only
a Chinese dictionary: any unknown character is defined only by
reference to other unknown characters, and the dictionary provides no way to connect these characters to anything outside of
the dictionary. Harnad calls this the symbol grounding problem.
Metaphoric representation is an approach to addressing the
symbol grounding problem. The general thrust of the theory, as
put forth by Lakoff and Johnson (1980), is that there are few
concrete concepts that are learned through bodily experience
and which are understood directly, on their own terms.
Examples of such primary domains include spatial orientation and containment. Most other concepts are more abstract,
and through repeated pairings of experience with the concrete
domains, these come to be understood indirectly, in terms of
those original concrete concepts. Thus, abstract concepts are
represented in terms of our conceptualization of concrete, bodily experienced domains. Such representations are termed conceptual metaphors, distinguishing them from the linguistic
metaphors in which they find expression.
Lakoff and Johnson (1980) posit that such metaphors are used
to conceptualize emotion. In their terminology, emotions are a
target domain and the more concrete domains used to represent
them are source domains, because they are the source of conceptual structure. (Elsewhere these are called the vehicle and
topic, e.g., Murphy, 1996.) Some conceptual metaphors are
very general and apply to almost all emotions. For instance, positive and negative emotions alike can be represented as fluid in a
container (She was filled with sadness. He was overflowing with
joy.) and as natural forces (She was swept off her feet. He was
engulfed by anger.). In contrast, other metaphors apply to some
emotions and not others. For example, the dimensions of light
dark and updown are used to represent sadness and happiness
but not anger, fear or love (Kvecses, 2000).
As Ortony (1975) notes, linguistic metaphors traditionally
are viewed as serving three purposes for communication: they
allow us to express ideas that would be difficult to express in literal terms; they provide a compact way of communicating a
complex array of information; and they convey our experience
in a rich, vivid way. For example, the metaphorical statement
Fear slowly crept up on him expresses a more complex set of
ideas than He slowly became afraid. In a compact and vivid
way, it implies a certain relationship between the fear and self,
namely, that the fear is a separate entity from the self that can
approach it in space. It also conveys that the self is, in some
sense, caught unawares; the fear is hidden and not under the
selfs control, it is predatory and deliberate in its intention.
Metaphors are used in discourse about any topic, but they
appear to be especially frequent when the topic is emotional,
and their frequency increases with emotional intensity (Ortony
& Fainsilber, 1989). We may use metaphoric language to
describe affective experience because our literal language is
inadequate. This mirrors the position of Lakoff and Johnson
(1980) that the ability to conceptualize emotions on their own
terms is inadequate, leading us to represent them in terms of
other, more concrete, dimensions of experience. According to
Lakoff and Johnson, emotions are abstract and difficult to conceptualize (see also Kvecses, 2000). When contrasting emotions with space, Lakoff and Johnson explain:
Although a sharply delineated conceptual structure for space emerges
from our perceptual-motor functioning, no sharply defined conceptual
structure for the emotions emerges from our emotional functioning
alone . . . [M]etaphors allow us to conceptualize our emotions in more
sharply defined terms. (1980, p. 58).
Crawford
Empirical Evidence
This review will focus primarily on affective metaphors which
use a continuous dimension as their source domain, such as
GOOD is UP. Lakoff and Johnson (1980) called these orientation
metaphors because the best example is spatial orientation, but
the more general term dimensional metaphors is used here in
order to include non-spatial dimensions such as brightness.
Such dimensional metaphors are thought to provide coherence
to systems of abstract concepts (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980) by
consistently mapping them to common physical dimensions.
For example, happiness, status, health and morality gain conceptual coherence because they are all mapped to the vertical
dimension of space. Although specific emotions often have
their own specific metaphors (e.g., anger is seeing red), the
experimental work on metaphoric representation of affect has
focused on mapping evaluative reactions to continuous dimensions such as vertical position, brightness, size and distance.
GOOD is UP
The vertical dimension of space is commonly used to describe
valenced states, as when HAPPINESS, POWER, STATUS and HEALTH
132
Crawford
134
GOOD is BRIGHT
In a televised interview days after the September 11th attacks,
Vice President Dick Cheney discussed the work of US intelligence agencies by saying, We have to work, sort of, the dark
side if you will. Weve got to spend time in the shadows.
( h t t p : / / w w w. w h i t e h o u s e . g o v / v i c e p r e s i d e n t / n e w s speeches/speeches/vp20010916.html). Cheney clearly intended to
convey the need for secrecy, but his metaphorical use of darkness
is especially chilling because it suggests secrecy of the most sinister kind. In the metaphorical use of light and dark, light indicates purity, morality, knowledge, transparency and happiness,
whereas dark indicates evil, ignorance, secrecy and sadness.
Such associations are thought to hold across all cultures (Adams
& Osgood, 1973), suggesting a universal source. This association may stem from humans dependence on vision, which
makes us more vulnerable in the darkness and fearful of it.
Furthermore, light generally comes from above, and thus may
inherit the positive affect associated with UP (Tolaas, 1991).
Whatever the original sources, this association is reinforced
powerfully through language and other cultural conventions.
The link between affect and brightness is so prevalent that
using brightness terms to evoke affect hardly seems metaphorical. We can take a dim view of someone and can be kept in the
dark. Dark moods can be treated with mood brighteners and we
can be told to look on the bright side. Although some of these
forms are conventionalized, a number of findings indicate that
the association between affect and brightness has implications
for behavior and perception. For example, in a study of professional hockey and football athletes, Frank and Gilovich (1988)
showed that those wearing black uniforms received more penalties than those wearing white uniforms. Additional laboratory
studies suggested that this difference occurred not only because
uniform color biases judgments about the players, but also
because it affects the players own behavior. Teams of participants who were assigned to wear black t-shirts chose more
aggressive game activities than did those assigned to wear white
t-shirts.
As Meier, Robinson, and Clore (2004) note, the metaphoric
representation account argues that processing in the abstract
domain of affect necessarily recruits perceptual processes, and
thus that the association between valence and brightness should
be obligatory. They examined this in a series of experiments that
presented positive and negative words in black or white font and
required participants to judge the valence of the words. They
found that words presented in metaphor-congruent font color
were evaluated more quickly and accurately than words presented in the opposite font color. In contrast, when participants
were shown the same stimuli and asked to judge whether the font
color was white or black, there was no impact of stimulus
valence. This asymmetry of findings mirrors that shown in their
work on GOOD is UP (Meier & Robinson, 2004). Meier et al.
Crawford
136
other people are judged more similar to the self than the self is
to those others. While the asymmetric findings reviewed here are
consistent with metaphoric representation, there are nonmetaphoric processes that could give rise to such asymmetries.
Crawford
Conclusion
Affective experience is foundational to social life, and yet it
seems nearly impossible to communicate about it in its own
138
References
Adams, F. M., & Osgood, C. E. (1973). A cross-cultural study of the affective
meanings of color. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 4, 135156.
Balcetis, E. (2007). Motivated visual perception: How we see what we
want to see (Doctoral dissertation, Cornell University, 2006).
Dissertation Abstracts International: Section B: The Sciences and
Engineering, 67, 7B.
Barsalou, L. W. (1999). Perceptual symbol systems. Behavior and Brain
Sciences, 22, 577660.
Barsalou, L. W. (2008). Grounded cognition. Annual Review of Psychology,
59, 617645.
Barsalou, L. W., Niedenthal, P. M., Barbey, A. K., & Ruppert, J. A. (2003).
Social embodiment. In B. H. Ross (Ed.), The psychology of learning
and motivation: Advances in research and theory (Vol. 43, pp. 4392).
New York: Elsevier Science.
Barsalou, L. W., Simmons, W. K., Barbey, A. K., & Wilson, C. D. (2003).
Grounding conceptual knowledge in modality-specific systems. Trends
in Cognitive Sciences, 7, 8491.
Bloom, P. (2001). Prcis of how children learn the meaning of words.
Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24(6), 10951134.
Boroditsky, L., & Ramscar, M. (2002). The roles of body and mind in
abstract thought. Psychological Science, 13(2), 185189.
Bretherton, I., Fritz, J., Zahn-Waxler, C., & Ridgeway, D. (1986). Learning
to talk about emotions: A functionalist perspective. Child Development,
57(3), 529548.
Cacioppo, J. T., Priester, J. R., & Berntson, G. G. (1993). Rudimentary determinants of attitudes: II. Arm flexion and extension have differential effects
on attitudes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 517.
Chandler, C., & Crawford, L. E. (2008). The influence of auditory stimuli
on judgments of word valence. Unpublished manuscript, University of
Richmond.
Chen, S., & Bargh, J. A. (1999). Consequences of automatic evaluation:
Immediate behavior predispositions to approach or avoid the stimulus.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25, 215.
Crawford, L. E., Margolies, S. M., Drake, J. T., & Murphy, M. E. (2006).
Affect biases memory of location: Evidence for the spatial representation of affect. Cognition & Emotion, 20, 1153.
Crawford
Meier, B. P., Robinson, M. D., & Clore, G. L. (2004). Why good guys wear
white: Automatic inferences about stimulus valence based on brightness. Psychological Science, 15(2), 8287.
Meier, B. P., Robinson, M. D., Crawford, L. E., & Ahlvers, W. J. (2007).
When light and dark thoughts become light and dark responses:
Affect biases brightness judgments. Emotion, 7(2), 366376.
Meier, B. P., Wilson, K. D., Hauser, D. J., Gamble, K. R., & Taylor, J. M.
(2008). Somethings up on the side: Affect, vertical space and reference frame. Manuscript submitted for publication.
Murphy, G. L. (1996). On metaphoric representation. Cognition, 60(2),
173204.
National funk congress deadlocked on get up/get down issue. (1999,
October 27). The Onion. Retrieved April 28, 2008, from http://www.
theonion.com/content/node/29205
Ortony, A. (1975). Why metaphors are necessary and not just nice.
Educational Theory, 25, 4553.
Ortony, A., & Fainsilber, L. (1989). The role of metaphors in descriptions
of emotions. In Y. Wilks (Ed.), Theoretical issues in natural language
processing (pp. 178182). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Phillips, R. D., Wagner, S. H., Fells, C. A., & Lynch, M. (1990). Do infants
recognize emotion in facial expressions? Categorical and metaphorical evidence. Infant Behavior and Development, 13, 7184.
Ritchie, L. D. (2008) Gateshead revisited: Perceptual simulators and fields of
meaning in the analysis of metaphors. Metaphor & Symbol, 23, 2449.
Searle, J. (1980). Minds, brains, and programs. Behavioral and Brain
Sciences, 3, 417424.
Silvera, D. H., Josephs, R. A., & Giesler, R. B. (2002). Bigger is better: The
influence of physical size on aesthetic preference judgments. Journal of
Behavioral Decision Making, 15(3), 189202.
Strack, F., Martin, L. L., & Stepper, S. (1988). Inhibiting and facilitating
conditions of the human smile: A nonobtrusive test of the facial feedback hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54(5),
768777.
Tolaas, J. (1991). Notes on the origin of some spatialization metaphors.
Metaphor & Symbolic Activity, 6(3), 203218.
Tversky, A. (1977). Features of similarity. Psychological Review, 84(4),
327352.
Wansink, B., & Van Ittersum, K. (2003). Bottoms up! The influence of elongation on pouring and consumption volume. Journal of Consumer
Research, 30(3), 455463.
Weger, U. W., Meier, B. P., Robinson, M. D., & Inhoff, A. W. (2007).
Things are sounding up: Affective influences on auditory tone perception. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 14(3), 517521.
Wilson, M. (2002). Six views of embodied cognition. Psychonomic Bulletin
and Review, 9, 625.
Zbikowski, L. M. (1998). Metaphor and music theory: Reflections from cognitive science. Music Theory Online, 4.1. Retrieved March 10, 2008, from
http://societymusictheory.org/mto/issues/mto.98.4.1/mto.98.4.1.zbikows
ki_frames.html
Zwaan, R. A., & Yaxley, R. H. (2003). Spatial iconicity affects semantic
relatedness judgments. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 10(4),
954958.