tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/metaphors-36504/articlesMetaphors – The Conversation2022-06-22T19:01:27Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1853432022-06-22T19:01:27Z2022-06-22T19:01:27ZMetaphors matter: Why changing the name ‘monkeypox’ may help curb the discriminatory language used to discuss it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469567/original/file-20220617-7320-18b9q2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C1%2C734%2C546&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Many of the metaphors used to discuss monkeypox evoke a criminal or a rebellious child.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Pixabay)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As we pass the one-month milestone of the current monkeypox outbreak, reports are emerging that the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/06/15/monkeypox-name-who/">World Health Organization (WHO) intends to change the name of the monkeypox virus to avoid stigma and discrimination</a>. While this is an important step, more than a name change may be needed. </p>
<p>As a researcher studying metaphors in health, I use <a href="https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230000612_3">critical metaphor analysis</a> to explore how the metaphors used to understand and discuss monkeypox may amplify problematic, discriminatory and dangerous social beliefs.</p>
<p>When an issue is metaphorically framed a certain way, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10926488.2016.1150756">the solution to that issue often follows within the same frame</a>. For example, metaphors used in the context of COVID-19 <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10926488.2021.1994840">frequently framed it as an enemy, and the pandemic as a war</a>. Within this frame, actions of “<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2021-012152">making sacrifices</a>,” “<a href="https://www.cbc.ca/arts/these-artists-are-saying-thank-you-to-canada-s-heroic-healthcare-leaders-1.5533390">celebrating heroes on the front lines</a>,” and “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1367549420938403">sheltering in place” made sense</a>. </p>
<p>In the first month since monkeypox cases have been identified, different frames have been used to understand it. Each has possible consequences.</p>
<h2>A metaphorical criminal or child</h2>
<p>One way monkeypox is metaphorically framed is as a criminal. This criminal is constructed as having <em>broken out</em> of the West African area in which it had previously been <em>contained</em>. It has been “introduced” to the “community,” <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2022/05/27/toronto-public-health-reports-new-case-of-suspected-monkeypox.html">moving “undetected</a>,” creating a “threat” and “increasing risk.” Monkeypox may even be <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/monkeypox-symptom-severity-1.6483488">masked or disguised</a>.</p>
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<img alt="Bright blue rectangular virus particles against a yellow background" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470105/original/file-20220621-19-6gz9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470105/original/file-20220621-19-6gz9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=559&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470105/original/file-20220621-19-6gz9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=559&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470105/original/file-20220621-19-6gz9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=559&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470105/original/file-20220621-19-6gz9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=703&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470105/original/file-20220621-19-6gz9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=703&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470105/original/file-20220621-19-6gz9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=703&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Microscopic image of monkeypox virus particles. Descriptions of the virus in criminal terms can spill over into how we treat people who are affected by the virus.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(NIAID)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>When monkeypox is characterized as a criminal, the reasonable social response is to treat it as such. This is seen in how we describe the response to monkeypox in criminal terms: “<a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/monkeypox-cases-canada-dr-theresa-tam-1.6461022">suspected cases” need to be “investigated” and “detected</a>” to “contain” it. We create a story that makes sense given the type of stories we are familiar with, and the words we have available. This can spill over into how we respond to people with the virus. </p>
<p>Monkeypox has also been described as being “<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-monkeypox-a-microbiologist-explains-whats-known-about-this-smallpox-cousin-183499">related to,” the “cousin” of, or “in the same family” as smallpox</a>. In comparison to smallpox, which previously received significantly “more attention and resources,” <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2022/05/26/toronto-reports-its-first-confirmed-case-of-monkeypox.html">monkeypox was comparatively “neglected</a>.” </p>
<p>Only now is monkeypox “attracting attention,” “making itself known” in “unexpected places” and ceasing to be “mute.” It is “<a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-moneypox-outbreak-canada-virus-response/">popping up on our doorstep</a>” and inviting itself into our communities. These descriptions combine into a characterization of monkeypox as something of a neglected, rebelling child. </p>
<h2>How metaphors feed narratives</h2>
<p>The metaphors framing monkeypox occur in the broader context of existing discriminatory narratives. Characterizing monkeypox as a criminal may have problematic consequences when it occurs alongside reports of <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/05/20/1100356808/warning-vulnerable-populations-about-monkeypox-without-stigmatizing-them">cases among men who have sex with men</a>. </p>
<p>Ongoing LGBTQ+ history is riddled with <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10999922.2017.1416881">criminalization</a>, where identifying as LGBTQ+ is considered a crime, as well as a <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/671116/nobodys-normal-by-roy-richard-grinker/9780393531640">history of being considered an “illness</a>.” Inaccurate descriptions <a href="https://doi.org/10.1076/jmep.26.4.343.3011">of HIV/AIDS as a disease affecting only gay men</a> further entrenched these harmful, stigmatizing narratives. </p>
<p>When monkeypox is framed as a criminal in the context of this history, it may strengthen the association between LGBTQ+ identity, illness and criminality. </p>
<p>Similarly, when monkeypox is portrayed as a “Black” disease, through the <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/06/15/1105188732/monkeypox-new-name-who-world-health">frequent imagery of lesions on Black bodies and association with Africa</a>, alongside the ongoing criminalization of Black people, this may further entrench that narrative.</p>
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<p>The story of the neglected, rebelling child runs parallel to a larger colonial narrative that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/02604027.2018.1485438">infantilizes many African countries and peoples</a>. Metaphorically, countries are constructed as people: political “bodies” that interact within, and are part of, a larger “international community.” </p>
<p>In these metaphors, <a href="https://georgelakoff.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/metaphor-and-war-the-metaphor-system-used-to-justify-war-in-the-gulf-lakoff-1991.pdf">western countries are often framed as parents, and those still “developing” as child-like</a>. Western countries could be perceived to have a responsibility to help them develop “correctly” if they are rebelling, which fuels colonialist attitudes, policies and actions.</p>
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<img alt="Small orange dots on an amorphous green surface" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470107/original/file-20220621-11-vc6thz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470107/original/file-20220621-11-vc6thz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470107/original/file-20220621-11-vc6thz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470107/original/file-20220621-11-vc6thz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470107/original/file-20220621-11-vc6thz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=650&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470107/original/file-20220621-11-vc6thz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=650&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470107/original/file-20220621-11-vc6thz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=650&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Microscopic image of monkeypox virus particles on the surface of cells. When monkeypox is characterized as a neglected, rebelling child, it can feed into broader colonial and racist narratives.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(NIAID)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Monkeypox characterized as a neglected, rebelling child may blend with broader colonial and racist narratives, fuelling racist beliefs and actions. <a href="https://theconversation.com/comparing-black-people-to-monkeys-has-a-long-dark-simian-history-55102">Another racist narrative compares Black people to apes</a> and other primates. This narrative is evoked in conjunction with the child metaphor through the virus’s name — monkeypox — along with descriptions of it originating from particular African regions or countries. </p>
<h2>The case for name change</h2>
<p>One of the reported reasons for the WHO’s intended name change is to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/06/15/monkeypox-name-who/">disassociate monkeypox with the African continent,</a>, particularly the names of variants with African countries. There is also a call to <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/06/15/1105188732/monkeypox-new-name-who-world-health">stop using images of lesions on Black bodies when discussing the virus</a>. </p>
<p>In the context of broader discriminatory narratives discussed here, this makes sense. Breaking these associations may weaken the link between the language used to understand monkeypox and the broader discriminatory narratives that permeate culture. </p>
<p>However, the metaphors used to understand the virus will still exist. They may still be problematic. As we decide “who monkeypox is,” we need to consider not only if this is an accurate characterization of the virus, but how this narrative may intermingle with others already in circulation and the harmful consequences this may have on sustaining racist, colonial, homophobic and other discriminatory attitudes and beliefs.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/185343/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kaitlin Sibbald receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. She is affiliated with the Canadian Association of Occupational Therapists.</span></em></p>The metaphors used to characterize monkeypox can contribute to narratives that help sustain racist, colonial, homophobic and other discriminatory attitudes and beliefs.Kaitlin Sibbald, PhD in Health Candidate, Dalhousie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1803722022-04-24T14:02:40Z2022-04-24T14:02:40ZSet in stone: Using statue-related metaphors to describe history misses the mark<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458692/original/file-20220419-20001-y7s59p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=46%2C0%2C5114%2C3430&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Statues grace the covers of history books, museum pamphlets and course syllabi.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(S. Ruvalcaba/Unsplash)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As countries reckon with racism, colonialism and genocide, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/6/7/statue-of-canada-residential-schools-architect-toppled-in-toronto">a recurring target of reappraisal are statues</a>. Across North America and Europe, statues <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs36SAytfuE">have been dismantled, toppled and vandalized</a> — and this is a valid critique. Commemoration often blindly celebrates historic figures through statues and plaques without considering their controversies. </p>
<p>While <a href="https://caravanmagazine.in/culture/the-complexities-of-addressing-past-while-decolonising-museums">museums</a>, <a href="https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/blog/addressing-colonial-narratives-museums/">galleries</a> and <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/12/27/1068197354/racial-reckoning-turns-focus-to-roadside-historical-markers">historic sites</a> have been subject to criticism as well, statues in particular have gripped public attention. </p>
<p>There are many possible reasons for this, such as statues being <a href="https://www.historytoday.com/archive/behind-times/statues-politics-and-past">one dimensional modes of commemoration</a> and the fact that they’re accessible. Another reason could be people’s reflexive association between history and statues — when we think history, we think statues.</p>
<p>As a history PhD candidate, I study our complicated relationship with statues and what purposes they serve. But you don’t have to study statues to see them everywhere. Statues grace the <a href="https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/subjects/history">covers of history books</a>, <a href="https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/the-british-museum_rgw-anderson/1281723/item/48066772/?gclid=Cj0KCQjwl7qSBhD-ARIsACvV1X3pVPxtpzSCgOFVWgWyDmmwWsdFYc3Sd1Uu___FN7g6t1X3bMfkHtkaAi-6EALw_wcB#idiq=48066772&edition=4149898">museum pamphlets</a> and <a href="https://www.dal.ca/faculty/arts/canadian-studies-program/programs/classes/current-timetable.html">course syllabi</a>. </p>
<p>People use statue-related language to describe the process of history-making, like “<a href="https://sunypress.edu/Books/S/Set-in-Stone">set in stone</a>,” “<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rel11010023">carved into</a>” and “<a href="https://www.google.ca/books/edition/Digging_Up_the_Dead/-hRTw-6oL3wC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=digging+history&printsec=frontcover">digging up</a>.”</p>
<p>These metaphors can be powerful, but also dangerous to history readers and writers. Metaphors have proven crucial to our learning process, but compared to whats being used now, there are better metaphors that could improve people’s understanding of the past instead of simplifying it.</p>
<h2>Metaphors help people understand</h2>
<p>Metaphors are used by many people to help convey a more abstract concept. For example, <a href="http://www.esalq.usp.br/lepse/imgs/conteudo_thumb/Cells-a-busy-factory.pdf">the metaphor of an industrial factory</a> is often used by biologists to communicate the complex process of a cell. </p>
<p>There has been a considerable amount research conducted to understand how humans use metaphors and heuristics (<a href="https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/heuristics">mental shortcuts that help with problem-solving</a>) to learn. Philosopher Thomas Kuhn <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo13179781.html">looked at how metaphors can contribute to scientific revolutions</a> and psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1738360">revealed the intuitive shorthands our minds use</a> (sometimes irrationally) to help navigate new problems.</p>
<p>Metaphors not only help us demonstrate and comprehend, but they also influence how we think at an unconscious level. In a study, psychologists <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0016782">Paul H. Thibodeau and Lera Boroditsky</a> found that using different metaphors to describe crime resulted in different solutions offered by participants. </p>
<p>If crime was described as a beast, then people suggested it needed to be controlled. If described as a plague, it needed to be contained. The words we use to describe the problem impact how we conceive of possible solutions.</p>
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<img alt="ALT" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458684/original/file-20220419-19-9pfx22.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458684/original/file-20220419-19-9pfx22.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458684/original/file-20220419-19-9pfx22.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458684/original/file-20220419-19-9pfx22.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458684/original/file-20220419-19-9pfx22.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458684/original/file-20220419-19-9pfx22.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458684/original/file-20220419-19-9pfx22.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">People use statue-related language to describe the process of history-making, like ‘set in stone’ or ‘carved into.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Giammarco/Unsplash)</span></span>
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<h2>History and statue-related metaphors</h2>
<p>Statue-related metaphors, like “carving” and “setting in stone,” present history as solid, unchanging and definitive. But history is actually none of these things. <a href="https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/september-2003/revisionist-historians">New perspectives and research are constantly evolving our understanding of the past</a> and history is constantly changing.</p>
<p>The danger in these metaphors is they can subconsciously discourage reinterpretation, which can further contribute to sexist, racist and colonial influence in historical writing. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://doi.org/10.1515/sem-2015-0131">scholar Nathan Black Rupp suggests</a>, words that are used by a community help to define it — for our purposes, this would be historians/history consumers and history. Rupp uses the example of how some communities can use violent lexicon to describe sex by employing metaphors like banging, hitting, or slamming. He says: “When we used destructive things as tarnings for non-destructive things we impose some of the violence on the non-violent secondary metaphor. Since metaphor is a means of equating meaning, we are equating sex with violent action.”</p>
<p>Similarly, even if it is done innocently, statue-related metaphors suggest history is one-dimensional, contributing to a subconscious rejection of new historical interpretations of the past. This is contradictory to the efforts of many <a href="https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780190221911/obo-9780190221911-0029.xml">settler-colonial historians</a> who seek to reverse the normalization of settler occupation and the exploitation of lands, resources and Indigenous Peoples.</p>
<p>There is already a growing resistance to these metaphors. Articles <a href="https://doi.org/10.5130/phrj.v28i0.7494">often include</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/hwj/dbm032">“set in stone”</a> used in a tongue-and-cheek way to describe the removal and protesting of colonial statues. </p>
<h2>River, tree and weaving</h2>
<p>Historians have started to suggest new or revived under-used metaphors, ones that don’t relate to statues. A common one is comparing history to <a href="https://www.google.ca/books/edition/The_River_of_History/a2T9o4m9avYC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA2&printsec=frontcover">a river</a> because it suggests change and fluidity. Another is a <a href="https://novanet-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/f/auflpa/NOVANET_ALEPH005884308">tree</a> with many roots and branches that demonstrate how far reaching and diverse history can be. </p>
<p>If you ask me, a more apt metaphor would be weaving because historians should present <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/03612759.2004.10526367">something that is one interpretation of a multi-faceted and complex past.</a> One that is convincing, well-researched and sound — but not singular.</p>
<p>Anthropologist Tim Ingold suggests that <a href="https://leiaarqueologia.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/the-perception-of-the-environment-tim-ingold.pdf">all forms of making are forms weaving</a>. It could be thought of as applicable to history in many ways: 1) the creation is based on acquiring and arranging elements, 2) weavers may arrange similar elements in different ways and 3) good weaving relies on the skills of a weaver to create a sound warp and weft — the basic constituents of all textiles.</p>
<p>So historians, drop your chisels — statue metaphors are no longer needed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/180372/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Grace McNutt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The danger in these metaphors is they can subconsciously discourage reinterpretation, which can further contribute to sexist, racist and colonial influence in historical writing.Grace McNutt, PhD Candidate in History, Dalhousie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1528782021-03-31T21:20:48Z2021-03-31T21:20:48ZHow to cope with pandemic fatigue by imagining metaphors<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392662/original/file-20210330-19-bwhksp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=19%2C9%2C6308%2C4209&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Metaphors are figures of speech that imply likeness; they can be useful tools in dealing with pandemic fatigue.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The COVID-19 pandemic continues to have dramatic impacts on mobility, work routines, social interactions and psychological distress. Although no longer novel, the pandemic is still causing an overall disruption of normality and challenging our ability to make sense of the world around us.</p>
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<p>The <a href="https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/events-as-they-happen">World Health Organization</a> has been drawing attention to <a href="https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/335820/WHO-EURO-2020-1160-40906-55390-eng.pdf">pandemic fatigue</a>, a natural response to a prolonged public health crisis. Pandemic fatigue involves decreasing motivation to follow health-related directives, including engaging in pandemic protective actions like eating well, exercising and decreasing tobacco or alcohol consumption.</p>
<p>All levels of public health are attempting to <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/12/health/pandemic-fatigue-wellness-partner/index.html">explain</a>, <a href="https://www.uchealth.org/today/5-tips-for-handling-pandemic-fatigue/">prevent</a> and <a href="https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/how-to-deal-with-coronavirus-burnout-and-pandemic-fatigue">cope with</a> this phenomenon.</p>
<h2>Making sense</h2>
<p>In <a href="https://theconversation.com/immigrant-women-are-falling-behind-during-the-covid-19-pandemic-147821">our research</a> on how people make sense of their experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic, we came to appreciate the power of metaphors as a coping tool.</p>
<p>A metaphor is a figure of speech in which one kind of object or idea is used to understand or explain another by implying likeness or analogy. By combining and reorganizing abstract and concrete features, metaphors influence thought processes, attitudes, beliefs and actions. They help us make sense of situations and stimulate new actions. </p>
<p>For example, by referring to the current growth of COVID-19 cases as the “third wave of the pandemic,” we call upon understandings of “waves” to facilitate understanding of the abstract and complex situation of the spread of the virus. </p>
<p>Metaphors make our experiences and desire tangible and allow us to see assumptions, behaviours and resources that are likely to support our goals and desires. As an intervention strategy, metaphors can help us gain insights into our situations.</p>
<p>Metaphors are commonly used <a href="https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/images-of-organization/book229704#tabview=toc">in research</a>, <a href="https://www.cleanlanguage.co.uk/articles/articles/127/1/Coaching-with-Metaphor/Page1.html">coaching</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S1754470X16000210">therapeutic practice</a> to help individuals make sense of situations and find new ways of dealing with problems. </p>
<p>Coaching helps people achieve specific personal or professional goals under the guidance of a trained professional. We drew on coaching principles used in <a href="https://cleanlearning.co.uk/about/faq/what-is-clean-language">Clean Language</a> and <a href="https://www.integralcoachingcanada.com/sites/default/files/pdf/jitpintroduction.pdf">Integral Coaching</a> to help international students and immigrants to cope with challenges in their lives during the first wave of the pandemic. We found that imaginative metaphors helped them find tangible ways to identify and achieve their goals and they felt more empowered through the process. </p>
<p>We propose that with a bit of imagination, anyone can use metaphors to cope with pandemic fatigue and find better ways to deal with these challenging times by following four simple steps.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392699/original/file-20210331-23-1bgsyw6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man wearing a surgical mask with his hands on either side of his head." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392699/original/file-20210331-23-1bgsyw6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392699/original/file-20210331-23-1bgsyw6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392699/original/file-20210331-23-1bgsyw6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392699/original/file-20210331-23-1bgsyw6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392699/original/file-20210331-23-1bgsyw6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392699/original/file-20210331-23-1bgsyw6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392699/original/file-20210331-23-1bgsyw6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">It’s been over a year since the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic, and we’re still unclear on when it will be over and we can resume our everyday lives.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Imagining metaphors</h2>
<p><strong>Step 1: Identify a goal or desire under your control.</strong></p>
<p>The goal should describe what you want in positive terms. Ask yourself: What would I like to have happen? It should be something that has not yet happened, contains a desire or need and does not include any reference to the problem. </p>
<p>Let’s take the example of Tim, one of the participants in our research, who was <a href="https://www.womenshealthmag.com/uk/health/a34819334/loneliness-survey-results/">struggling to feel connected</a> with his loved ones due to travel and social distance restrictions. Tim found virtual connections unsatisfactory and felt lonely. As he reflected on what was causing him pain, he identified the goal “to be better able to find satisfaction in virtual connections.” </p>
<p><strong>Step 2: Imagine a metaphor that depicts how you can achieve that goal.</strong></p>
<p>Ask yourself: And that is like what? Imagine a metaphor that represents the goal when achieved. It helps to think of a noun and then elaborate on the characteristics of that noun through adjectives. </p>
<p>Tim imagined a far-reaching satellite as a way to articulate a connection that is strong and reliable and happens at a long distance. </p>
<p><strong>Step 3: Fully develop the metaphor by focusing on details to gain a feel for the metaphor.</strong> </p>
<p>Ask yourself, “Is there anything else about this metaphor that I’m using?” </p>
<p>Tim continued to imagine his satellite and answering the question: “And is there anything else about this far-reaching satellite?” multiple times. Through this process, he explored how the satellite worked to have far-reaching connections. Through exploration, elaboration and articulation, Tim realized that what was important to him was to read the connection signals. He needed to be better at noticing when a connection was happening or when others were trying to connect with him from a distance.</p>
<p><strong>Step 4: Identify what needs to happen for the metaphor to become your new reality.</strong> </p>
<p><a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-to-set-goals_b_3226083">Successful goals</a> need to be broken down into small achievable steps to visualize and articulate an action or outcome to be fulfilled. Ask yourself: What needs to happen? And can that happen? Repeat those questions until what needs to happen is clear and achievable. </p>
<p>Tim decided to make a few phone calls to people he missed and made a plan to check in with his girlfriend every morning.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378367/original/file-20210112-19-luzksy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A four-step guide to using metaphors" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378367/original/file-20210112-19-luzksy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378367/original/file-20210112-19-luzksy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378367/original/file-20210112-19-luzksy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378367/original/file-20210112-19-luzksy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378367/original/file-20210112-19-luzksy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378367/original/file-20210112-19-luzksy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378367/original/file-20210112-19-luzksy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Four steps to using metaphors to help relieve pandemic fatigue.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Luciara Nardon)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This four-step process can be repeated for various goals and is a useful practice to maintain during the pandemic and the long process of recovery ahead. Imaginative metaphors are a powerful tool to keep in the mix of self-care — they help create a renewed sense of empowerment and a change in mindset to deal with pandemic fatigue.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/152878/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Luciara Nardon received funding from the Centre for Research on Inclusion at Work and funding from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Partnership Insight Grant (435-2020-0025)</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amrita Hari received funding from the Carleton University Centre for Research on Inclusion at Work and funding from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Partnership Insight Grant (435-2020-0025).</span></em></p>Creative problem-solving using metaphors can help us deal with the long-term anxiety and challenges of the coronavirus pandemic.Luciara Nardon, Associate professor, international business, Carleton UniversityAmrita Hari, Associate Professor of Women's and Gender Studies, Carleton UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1411762020-07-10T12:22:39Z2020-07-10T12:22:39ZHow talking about the coronavirus as an enemy combatant can backfire<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346674/original/file-20200709-22-rmplsv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C11%2C3833%2C3064&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Big, tough and strong is only helpful when you're fighting other people.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/close-up-of-coronavirus-model-with-guns-and-flag-on-royalty-free-image/1220591463?adppopup=true">Sergi Rodriguez Lopez/EyeEm via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>We see this war reflected in the language that gets used by politicians, policymakers, journalists and healthcare workers. </p>
<p>As the “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2020/mar/23/invisible-enemy-trump-says-he-is-wartime-president-in-coronavirus-battle-video">invisible enemy</a>” rolled in, entire economies halted as populations “sheltered in place.” We were told to “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/20/health/coronavirus-response-must-adapt-frieden-analysis/index.html">hunker down</a>” for the long battle ahead and to “<a href="https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/video-audio-photos-rush-transcript-amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-announces-4">support our troops</a>,” the health care workers, fighting on the “<a href="https://www.brookings.edu/research/to-protect-frontline-workers-during-and-after-covid-19-we-must-define-who-they-are/">front lines</a>.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/18/politics/trump-defense-production-act-coronavirus/index.html">These military-inspired metaphors serve a purpose</a>. Unlike the dense linguistic landscape of science and medicine, their messages are clear: Danger. Buckle Down. Cooperate. </p>
<p>In fact, studies have shown that sometimes military metaphors can help <a href="https://www.doi.org/10.1080/10926488.2018.1407992">unite people</a> against a common enemy. They can <a href="https://www.doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2017.1289111">convey a sense of urgency</a> so that people drop what they’re doing and start paying attention. </p>
<p>However, <a href="https://tabithamoses.com/">as someone who has studied the way language influences behavior</a>, I know that this kind of rhetoric can have long-term effects that are <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Collin_Jerome2/publication/337915709_Proceeding_Kuala_Lumpur_International_Multidisciplinary_Academic_Conference_KLIMAC_2019_eISBN_978-967-16859-5-2_Hotel_Istana_Kuala_Lumpur_Malaysia_CANCER_METAPHOR_AND_ITS_ASSOCATION_WITH_CANCER-RELATE/links/5df2e18192851c836478d33c/Proceeding-Kuala-Lumpur-International-Multidisciplinary-Academic-Conference-KLIMAC-2019-eISBN-978-967-16859-5-2-Hotel-Istana-Kuala-Lumpur-Malaysia-CANCER-METAPHOR-AND-ITS-ASSOCATION-WITH-CANCER-RELA.pdf">less positive</a>, particularly within health and medicine. In fact, research has shown that these metaphors can cause people to make decisions that go against sound medical advice. </p>
<h2>A linguistic war footing</h2>
<p>Militarized rhetoric was popularized with the “<a href="https://www.drugpolicy.org/issues/brief-history-drug-war">War on Drugs</a>,” a term coined by President Richard Nixon in an effort to reduce illicit drug use in the U.S. Since then, the language of war <a href="https://mh.bmj.com/content/medhum/33/2/93.full.pdf">has seeped into our collective lexicon</a>. We’re currently engaged in a war against <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2017.1289111">climate change</a>. Some argue there’s a <a href="https://doi.org/10.3138/jrpc.21.3.001">war on Christmas</a>, while others say there’s a <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_War_on_Truth.html?id=-3YcMQAACAAJ">war against truth</a>.</p>
<p>So it’s only natural that when a new, deadly virus emerges, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/01/us/war-on-coronavirus-attack/index.html">the warspeak persists</a>. </p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/15265161.2016.1214305">Military metaphors aren’t new to medicine</a>; they’ve long played a role in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/15265161.2016.1214307">shaping patients’ relationships with illness</a>. <a href="http://www.susansontag.com/SusanSontag/books/illnessAsMetaphor.shtml">Cancer</a> is a key example of this. The cancer is an enemy, invading the patient’s body. Patients are told they must fight, that they are at war, and they must be strong while they receive treatments that target those enemy cells for destruction. </p>
<p>The fact they are used so often indicates that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1521/soco.2019.37.3.314">these metaphors serve a purpose</a>. They’re simple and straightforward, helping us comprehend and categorize something that’s complex and unpredictable. </p>
<h2>Why war and medicine don’t mesh</h2>
<p>But this framing contains a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jan/08/keep-calm-and-carry-on-posters-austerity-ubiquity-sinister-implications">potentially dangerous</a> undercurrent.</p>
<p>Language affects cognition, and cognition affects our behaviors. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10926488.2018.1407992">Wartime language</a> has been shown to alter our behavior – and not always for the better.</p>
<p>In war, opposing sides are engaged in a struggle. Whoever survives longest and fights hardest wins. Strength and confidence are commended, while fearful behaviors are viewed with contempt. The World War II poster “<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150402071239/http://ww2poster.co.uk/2009/04/1939-3-posters/">Keep calm and carry on</a>” exemplifies this mindset. The underlying message of the so-called “<a href="https://www.globalpolicy.org/war-on-terrorism.html">War on Terror</a>” was to not allow fear to disrupt our lives. There was a major focus on returning to “life as normal,” and the return to national pastimes, <a href="https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/remembering-baseballs-role-in-helping-america-recover-after-9-11/">like baseball</a>, was thought to play a huge role in helping the country heal. </p>
<p>These approaches can <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17538068.2016.1177923?casa_token=DAsj1A1qbwwAAAAA%3A2K6QifMmbZZMVs-LaY4ZUR6vBxGTvzVlwVUkhMnIfT87tqeiZEAtJWc3WADqwvnVhUXQX64wdLAs">appear helpful</a>, but in the case of the coronavirus <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31142-9/fulltext">medical advice suggests physical distancing and mask wearing</a>. Unfortunately, this guidance requires disruption. To stay home is to <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2020/3/24/21191184/coronavirus-social-distancing-pandemic-spring-break-keep-calm-carry-on">change your routine</a>, to wear a mask is to <a href="https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a32478465/covid-19-men-not-wearing-face-masks-coronavirus/">appear weak and afraid</a> and to avoid everything that makes up our daily routine <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/06/health/why-people-dont-wear-masks-wellness-trnd/index.html">is to let the enemy win</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346689/original/file-20200709-34-fm8r91.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346689/original/file-20200709-34-fm8r91.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346689/original/file-20200709-34-fm8r91.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346689/original/file-20200709-34-fm8r91.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346689/original/file-20200709-34-fm8r91.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346689/original/file-20200709-34-fm8r91.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346689/original/file-20200709-34-fm8r91.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">When dealing with a virus, rhetorical bombast is meaningless – and can even backfire.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/gun-shoots-bacteria-2019-ncov-concept-of-the-royalty-free-image/1215216903?adppopup=true&uiloc=thumbnail_similar_images_adp">Artur Nichiporenko via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Research shows that military metaphors lead to negative behaviors in other health situations. People may become more likely to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2017.09.006">take risks</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/15265161.2016.1214331">overtreat</a> themselves and be less likely to engage in <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=The%20war%20on%20prevention:%20bellicose%20cancer%20metaphors%20hurt%20%20prevention%20intentions">preventive activities</a>. For example, some people may not want to appear afraid of sun exposure, and this can make them less likely to use sunscreen. Others may continue seeking treatments for terminal diseases – despite the debilitating side effects – because they don’t want to be seen as having “given up.”</p>
<p>The way war metaphors emphasize strength can also <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10461-020-02856-8">stigmatize</a> those who do become sick: They’re now <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/15265161.2016.1214305">seen as weak</a>. </p>
<p>The dichotomy of strength versus weakness implies choice, as though those who were infected <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/view/journals/fns/4/s1/article-ps213.xml?tab_body=abstract">chose to surrender</a>. In reality, that which makes us appear strong and confident in a war only works in the context of a battle with other humans. It goes without saying that something like a virus or an illicit drug has no grasp of human psychology, so displays of confidence are meaningless.</p>
<h2>War loosens our morals and ethics</h2>
<p>There’s also a more insidious element of war-like metaphors that frame public policy initiatives. </p>
<p>During war, the public <a href="http://www.philosophy.rutgers.edu/joomlatools-files/docman-files/moralitywar.pdf">is generally more open to actions that aren’t tolerated in peacetime</a>. The construction of <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/japanese-american-relocation#:%7E:text=Japanese%20internment%20camps%20were%20established,be%20interred%20in%20isolated%20camps.">Japanese internment camps</a> during World War II and the depiction of immigrants as “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/08/trump-immigrant-invasion-language-origins/595579/">invaders</a>” to lay the groundwork for their <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/21/us/politics/flores-migrant-family-detention.html">indefinite detainment</a> are stark illustrations of this phenomenon. </p>
<p>In the world of research and medicine, war and war metaphors have been shown <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15265161.2016.1214305?casa_token=IWOnaPQ3Mc4AAAAA%3AV9CDZosjPZEZHi7YQeP_AOiHZQcQOlB1vvR3xge34kmUPBJZNwalcZ4keBO5vzNBn5ddJHjcXmgf">to contribute to unethical research</a>. The “battles” against certain diseases have led researchers to violate their ethical responsibility in an effort to “win the war” for the greater good. For example, in the infamous <a href="http://academics.wellesley.edu/WomenSt/Reverby,%20Normal,%20JPH.pdf">Tuskegee Syphilis experiments</a> researchers justified not treating almost 400 African-American men for syphilis – or even telling them they had the disease – in order to learn about natural disease progression. </p>
<p>During the pandemic we’ve seen discussions of <a href="https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmsb2005114">health care rationing</a> and the prioritization of some lives over others in a way that <a href="https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/covid-19-the-ethical-anguish-of-rationing-medical-care">wouldn’t normally be acceptable</a>. Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/03/dan-patrick-coronavirus-grandparents">openly advocated</a> that older people should volunteer to die to save the economy. </p>
<p>When we describe a virus as an enemy to be defeated, it shifts our perceptions about how to respond to the virus and can cause the public to behave in illogical ways. </p>
<p>As states across the U.S. start to reopen, only to find out the virus continues to spread unabated, these military metaphors <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15265161.2016.1214305?casa_token=_KWxPxl_Aj4AAAAA%3AA4rRlhSy_g0v1PVMXF0l2o7qa0EhWcmnCy6iCboqZWGTZtHcq97tVH_OYnm2xNKOsPc8pvzypDMq">could be causing more harm than good</a>. It may be time to change the way we talk about the virus.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/141176/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tabitha Moses does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The use of military metaphors in some contexts can be helpful. In medicine? Not so much.Tabitha Moses, MD/PhD Candidate, Wayne State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1406742020-07-06T12:15:45Z2020-07-06T12:15:45ZHow did ‘white’ become a metaphor for all things good?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345627/original/file-20200704-33931-1l1sf8p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C19%2C1065%2C774&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'Jacob's Dream' by Salvador Rosa (c. 1665).</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://d3d00swyhr67nd.cloudfront.net/w1200h1200/collection/NTIV/HACH/NTIV_HACH_1166737-001.jpg">artuk.org</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Leer en <a href="https://theconversation.com/como-el-blanco-se-convirtio-en-una-metafora-de-las-cosas-buenas-143327">español</a></em></p>
<p>Shortly after George Floyd’s death, one of my friends texted me that Floyd wasn’t necessarily a bad person, but, pointing to his prior stints in prison, added that “he wasn’t lily-white either.”</p>
<p>Soon thereafter, I read an <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/05/opinion/whites-anti-blackness-protests.html">article</a> in The New York Times written by Chad Sanders in which he noted his agent canceled a meeting with him because he was observing a “<a href="https://www.ajc.com/news/what-blackoutday-day-organized-for-black-people-avoid-online-store-shopping/AmL0SIsTds0VQCmI5lDEKK/">Blackout Day</a>” in recognition of the Black men and women who have been brutalized and killed. </p>
<p>In the first example, white represents purity and morality. In the other, black represents nothingness or absence – similar to the use of “black hole” as a metaphor. </p>
<p>These types of linguistic metaphors – pervasive in speech – <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=dSp9HLsAAAAJ&hl=en">have been a focus of my research</a>. </p>
<p>There are “brighter days ahead” after “dark times.” We want to be whitelisted and not blacklisted for jobs. <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/computer-science/black-hat-hacker">Black hats</a> are the bad hackers and white hats the good ones. White lies make stretching the truth okay, while we don’t want to receive a black mark on our records. In picture books, good people, angels and Gods dress in white, but the villains, devils and the Grim Reaper dress in black. </p>
<p>Of course, there are exceptions: We prefer to be “in the black” versus “in the red” in financial statements. But for the most part, the delineation is remarkably consistent.</p>
<p>How do such linguistic metaphors get formed? And do they perpetuate racism? </p>
<h2>Processing a complicated world</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2025464">One theory</a>, proposed by cognitive linguists George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, is that metaphors are a cognitive tool allowing people to comprehend what they cannot see, taste, hear, smell or touch. They help people understand difficult, abstract concepts through simpler, more tangible, paradigms. </p>
<p>These metaphors get formed as people gain experience in the physical world. For instance, the abstract concept of power is connected to the concrete concept of height – perhaps because, as children, we saw adults as taller and more powerful. Then, as adults, we continue to implicitly <a href="http://www.igroup.org/schubert/papers/schubert_jpsp05.pdf">associate height with power</a>. It isn’t just tall buildings or tall people. In multiple studies, participants judged symbols representing people or groups to be more powerful if they simply appeared at a higher position on a page than other symbols. </p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p><a href="http://aradhnakrishna.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/emotion_up_down.pdf">My research</a> with fellow behavioral scientists Luca Cian and Norbert Schwarz found that vertical position also has an implicit association with emotionality and rationality. </p>
<p>If something is at the top of a page or a screen, we tend to perceive it as more rational, whereas if something is at the bottom, it appears more emotional. One reason may be that we metaphorically tend to connect the heart with emotion and the head with logic, and, in the physical world, our heads are actually higher than our hearts.</p>
<h2>Infusing color with meaning</h2>
<p>In a similar vein, fresh snow and clean water are white or transparent, whereas sullied water turns brown and then black. It is also bright and relatively safer during the day, but dark and more dangerous at night. While observing all of this, we start forming conceptual metaphors – or subconscious connections – between color and goodness. </p>
<p>Experiments have documented the existence of this relationship.</p>
<p>In <a href="http://journal.psych.ac.cn/xlxb/EN/10.3724/SP.J.1041.2014.01331">one paper</a>,
for example, psychologists Brian Meier, Michael Robinson and Gerald Clore showed that the color white is implicitly connected with morality, and the color black with immorality.</p>
<p>In another study, they <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0963-7214.2004.01502002.x">asked participants</a> to evaluate words as positive or negative. The words were shown in black or white font on a computer screen with a program measuring the speed of the classification. </p>
<p>Participants evaluated words with a positive meaning like “active,” “baby,” “clean” and “kiss” faster when they were shown in a white rather than black font. On the other hand, they classified words with a negative meaning – terms like “crooked,” “diseased,” “foolish” and “ugly” – faster when they appeared in black.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345331/original/file-20200702-111333-nklx87.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345331/original/file-20200702-111333-nklx87.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345331/original/file-20200702-111333-nklx87.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=272&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345331/original/file-20200702-111333-nklx87.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=272&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345331/original/file-20200702-111333-nklx87.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=272&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345331/original/file-20200702-111333-nklx87.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=342&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345331/original/file-20200702-111333-nklx87.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=342&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345331/original/file-20200702-111333-nklx87.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=342&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A sample of words used in the experiment by Meier, Robinson and Clore.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Aradhna Krishna</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These studies have been <a href="http://repository.essex.ac.uk/15666/1/Meier,%20Fetterman,%20%26%20Robinson,%202015.pdf">replicated</a>, and the same findings emerge, indicating that they’re not a fluke: The perceptual-conceptual links between color and goodness are ingrained in people.</p>
<h2>The race factor</h2>
<p>Could something as simple as the color-goodness relationship <a href="https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html">drive</a> racial prejudice? </p>
<p>In the color-goodness studies above, black and white colors were connected with good and bad. Implicit race bias tests, on the other hand, look for a connection between Black and white faces and goodness.</p>
<p>There is a subtle but important difference here. The implicit bias race test detects prejudice towards Black people. So besides skin color, it also picks up reactions to other differences in appearance – from hair to facial structure – along with any animosity one may have previously harbored. Still, the color-goodness association is clearly a factor in racial prejudice.</p>
<p>Can these conceptual metaphors – so ingrained in our everyday speech – be upended? What if we wrote that something was as pure as the blackest eyes; as rich as the darkest hair; or as sophisticated as a black dress? </p>
<p>What if Gods and heroes were dressed in black and villains in white? </p>
<p>What if, as Muhammad Ali <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-52988605/muhammad-ali-why-is-everything-white">pointed out</a> in a 1971 interview, we had vanilla devil’s food cake and dark-chocolate angel cake? </p>
<p>Metaphors aren’t ironclad. It’s possible to consciously change the way we write, draw, design costumes – and, yes, bake. Over time, perhaps this could gradually erode some of our implicit biases.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/140674/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Aradhna Krishna does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>We want to be whitelisted and not blacklisted for jobs. White lies make stretching the truth okay, but you don’t want to receive a black mark on your record.Aradhna Krishna, Dwight F. Benton Professor of Marketing, University of MichiganLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/986762018-08-02T13:15:24Z2018-08-02T13:15:24ZThe coded images that let advertisers target all our senses at once<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230413/original/file-20180802-136673-bb6qvd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/vector-illustration-brain-supernatural-mental-connection-1067117006?src=_beu216VQji-pry549yOtw-1-10">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>We’re so bombarded with commercial messages every day that creating an ad that actually sticks in the mind is an increasingly difficult task. <a href="http://www.neuromarkewiki.com/images/0/05/Sensory_marketing_krishna_and_schwarz_2014.pdf">Research shows</a> that one way to make advertised products more memorable is to engage consumers’ feelings and emotions by stimulating multiple senses at once. And advertisers are now more consciously using this approach in what you’d typically think of as a visual-only medium: print images.</p>
<p>Marketing has undergone what researchers have called a <a href="http://www.percepnet.com/cien01_07_ang.htm">multisensory revolution</a>. Browsing the shops around Christmas time, for instance, is typically a multisensory experience, and that’s no accident. Shops combine ambient Christmas music and Christmas-related scents to <a href="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.921.1434&rep=rep1&type=pdf">influence consumers’ behaviour</a> and increase sales.</p>
<p>Video advertisements also resort to the multisensory strategy. McDonald’s ads, for example, display the famous red and yellow logo that triggers a representation of the brand stored in our mind through the sense of sight, together with a now well-known tune that triggers a representation of the brand stored in our mind through the sense of hearing. The brand is encoded in our memory by means of both visual and audio elements. This establishes immediate and subconscious associations between the different sensory stimuli – the images and sounds – and the advertised product.</p>
<p>Multisensory marketing has also made its way into print advertising. To convey a multisensory message within a medium that is chiefly experienced by sight, advertisers use language and images to evoke the other senses. Evoking individual senses in print is relatively straightforward, using words like “smell”, “hear”, or “yellow”, and images of objects that we strongly associate with specific senses, such as a bottle of perfume (smell), or a bar of chocolate (taste). But words and images can also evoke multiple senses within the same ad, and in the most creative ways.</p>
<h2>Linguistic syneasthesia</h2>
<p>The chief method for making multisensory print ads is employing <a href="http://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/rcl.15.1.04str">linguistic synaesthesia</a>. Not to be confused with the <a href="https://theconversation.com/seeing-music-or-tasting-numbers-heres-what-we-can-learn-from-people-with-synaesthesia-71758">neuropsychological condition synaesthesia</a>, this is a type of metaphor created by combining linguistic expressions that refer to different senses. For example, “sweet melody” (taste and hearing) and “soft voice” (touch and hearing).</p>
<p>Print ads often display synaesthetic slogans. For example, the <a href="https://www.adsoftheworld.com/media/print/hogwine_potato_chips_banjo_music">Hogwine</a> food company advertises its potato chips with the slogan “Like sweet banjo music to your tongue”. The chips’ taste is associated with music, which is in turn described as “sweet”, an adjective that primarily relates to taste.</p>
<p><a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1470357218782001">Our recent research</a> shows how synaesthetic associations can also be created by the image only, in what researchers call <a href="http://www.vismet.org/VisMet/">visual metaphors</a>. For instance, <a href="http://scenestr.com.au/item/2551-art-on-your-ears-popclik-headphones">Popclik</a> advertises its headphones by showing them on a comic-like black and white background.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229821/original/file-20180730-106524-krjqwv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229821/original/file-20180730-106524-krjqwv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229821/original/file-20180730-106524-krjqwv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229821/original/file-20180730-106524-krjqwv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229821/original/file-20180730-106524-krjqwv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229821/original/file-20180730-106524-krjqwv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229821/original/file-20180730-106524-krjqwv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The colour of sound.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Y&R/Bravo</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Here, only the drawings within the space defined by the headphones are illustrated in colour. The positive feelings that we tend to associate with colourfulness (as opposed to black and white) are arguably used to convey a positive judgement about the quality of sound that the advertised headphones reproduce. In other words, this advertisement is an example of a visual synaesthesia by which sound is described in terms of colour.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226277/original/file-20180705-122256-deyn43.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226277/original/file-20180705-122256-deyn43.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226277/original/file-20180705-122256-deyn43.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226277/original/file-20180705-122256-deyn43.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226277/original/file-20180705-122256-deyn43.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226277/original/file-20180705-122256-deyn43.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226277/original/file-20180705-122256-deyn43.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The sound of chocolate.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">H&C Leo Burnett Beirut</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Not only do we have purely linguistic and purely visual synaesthesia: language and images can also interact. The image above advertises Toblerone through the image of a triangle, a musical instrument that recalls the characteristic shape of the chocolate bar. Music is also mentioned in the slogan “Music to your mouth”, where it is explicitly connected to the taste of the advertised product. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226264/original/file-20180705-122262-whpgrl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226264/original/file-20180705-122262-whpgrl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=861&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226264/original/file-20180705-122262-whpgrl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=861&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226264/original/file-20180705-122262-whpgrl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=861&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226264/original/file-20180705-122262-whpgrl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1082&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226264/original/file-20180705-122262-whpgrl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1082&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226264/original/file-20180705-122262-whpgrl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1082&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A sharp feeling.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Saatchi & Saatchi</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In other ads, the image seems to visually “translate” synaesthetic combinations that are commonly used in language. For instance, a lemon-flavoured soft drink has been advertised by the image of a lemon wearing a spiked mask. This combines with the slogan “L&P sour lemon. Sharp as. Bit different aye”. Together they provide a visual realisation of the conventional and commonly used linguistic synaesthesia “sharp taste”, with the lemon representing the taste and the spikes on the mask the sharpness (touch).</p>
<p>Visual communication is extremely powerful. As these ads show, it allows us to evoke multiple sensory domains and establish creative associations between them by effectively combining words and images. What’s not yet clear is whether these synaesthetic print advertisements have the same effects on sales and brand memorability as the complex experiences used in multisensory experiences. If so, learning how advertisers use these techniques to brand new products can help us to become more aware of our behaviour as consumers.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/98676/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marianna Bolognesi receives funding from UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, within the awarded research program Creative Multilingualism (<a href="https://www.creativeml.ox.ac.uk/">https://www.creativeml.ox.ac.uk/</a>)</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Francesca Strik Lievers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Print advertising increasingly makes use of linguistic and visual syneasthesia to create multisensory experiences.Marianna Bolognesi, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of OxfordFrancesca Strik Lievers, Postdoctoral researcher in Linguistics, Università degli studi di GenovaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/914562018-03-14T10:01:07Z2018-03-14T10:01:07ZEconomists are unfairly maligned – but they are often pretty prejudiced themselves<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210077/original/file-20180313-30958-kld2eu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/accounting-job-126103568">FotoYakov/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>I am an economist, and I have spent many hours of my life trying to fight misleading stereotypes about what I do. People, for example, often assume that when I say “I’m an economist”, I mean “I worship the creed of self-righting markets”.</p>
<p>In response to such assumptions or accusations, some of the world’s leading economists are <a href="https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/economics-and-finance/dismal-ignorance-of-the-dismal-science-a-response-to-larry-elliot">attempting</a> to explain <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WhatEconomistsReallyDo?src=hash">#WhatEconomistsReallyDo</a>. This is an important effort. But I think this discussion is also a great opportunity for economists to reflect on their own prejudices, in particular those regarding other social sciences.</p>
<p>Duncan Green, senior strategic adviser at Oxfam, <a href="https://twitter.com/fp2p/status/943927097587879936">recently wrote on Twitter</a> that, while working at the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID), he “got into trouble” at an “economics for non-economists” course for asking when the “non-economics for economists” course would be running.</p>
<p>There is something to this: it’s unhelpful when people criticise economics without understanding what economists actually do, but it is also unhelpful when economists criticise or even entirely disregard research from other disciplines simply because they use different methodologies.</p>
<p>Let’s start with “economics for non-economists”.</p>
<h2>Economists</h2>
<p>The different views on what economists actually do can be nicely <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/2389b3e0-d853-11e6-944b-e7eb37a6aa8e">captured in metaphors</a>. I find the cartography metaphor spot on: economists try to create and use maps to navigate the world of human choices.</p>
<p>If economists are cartographers, then economic models are their maps. Models, just like maps, make assumptions to abstract from unnecessary detail and show you the way.</p>
<p>Different maps are helpful in different situations. That’s what makes this metaphor helpful. If you are hiking in the Alps and you want to find your way, you will want a map that gives you a simplified perspective of the terrain – steep changes in altitude should stand out. A map with <a href="https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/File:Etna_Contours.jpg">elevation contour lines</a> will be very helpful. </p>
<p>On the other hand, if you are an engineer trying to calibrate the compass in an airplane, then a hiking map is not going to be of much use to you. Instead, you’ll want a map that gives you a simplified perspective of how magnetic fields change – a map that highlights <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_declination#Declination_change_over_time_and_location">magnetic variation</a> by showing you <a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/isogonic_line">isogonic lines</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210078/original/file-20180313-30969-1y86cp8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210078/original/file-20180313-30969-1y86cp8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210078/original/file-20180313-30969-1y86cp8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210078/original/file-20180313-30969-1y86cp8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210078/original/file-20180313-30969-1y86cp8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210078/original/file-20180313-30969-1y86cp8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210078/original/file-20180313-30969-1y86cp8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">There are all sorts of maps.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/3d-topographic-map-background-concept-topo-727794478?src=L8wDeWoSebCKAyM7rDXPzw-1-0">Andis Rea/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Deciding whether it is a good idea to rely on a specific map in a concrete situation is difficult. You need to understand the map’s limitations, as well as the limitations and strengths of available alternatives. For your hike in the Alps, a map of magnetic forces won’t be very helpful. There is nothing wrong with mapping isogonic lines; we should just know what they are and when to use them.</p>
<p>This example illustrates a key point. When people criticise economics they are often criticising how a specific map is unhelpful to answer a specific question, rather than criticising the foundational methods of the discipline.</p>
<p>Still, criticising how economists practice the discipline is important. Economic advice often feeds into policy decisions that affect a large number of people. So if economists make mistakes, or if they are unclear or ineffective communicators of the assumptions and limitations of their models, it can have large implications.</p>
<h2>Sociologists</h2>
<p>Now let’s move to “non-economics for economists”. If economists make maps, then what do, say, sociologists do? As it turns out, they also make maps: just different kinds of maps.</p>
<p>Economists often think that they have a monopoly over this “social science cartography”. This is both wrong and counterproductive. The fact that other social scientists don’t (usually) write their theories in mathematical notation, or that they rely on qualitative rather than quantitative research methods, doesn’t mean that they can’t make helpful maps of the world, or that their maps are in some way inferior. I personally like using maths to formalise my ideas. But maths is just a language. Unfortunately, some economists sometimes forget this; they mistake the language for the message.</p>
<p>I think a big part of the bias that many economists have against qualitative research is grounded in ignorance about what rigorous qualitative research actually looks like, and how it might be successfully used in practice.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210149/original/file-20180313-30994-1ybapvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210149/original/file-20180313-30994-1ybapvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210149/original/file-20180313-30994-1ybapvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210149/original/file-20180313-30994-1ybapvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210149/original/file-20180313-30994-1ybapvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=612&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210149/original/file-20180313-30994-1ybapvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=612&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210149/original/file-20180313-30994-1ybapvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=612&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A map derived from talking to people might look quite different – but it’s no less valid.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bardocz Peter/Shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Suppose that we are tasked with hunting for archaeological treasures buried in London. A qualitative researcher may try to make a map by relying on non-numerical data – for example, by going around the city, and interviewing people in a systematic and rigorous way.</p>
<p>If people keep on saying that there is an old folk song that tells the story of a hidden treasure in the South Bank, then that’s a sort of map. How helpful is such map? Well, who knows. It depends on the specific situation and the alternatives available. It also depends on what you ask, how you ask, who you ask. But the point is that it would be silly to dismiss the information just because it is qualitative.</p>
<h2>Working together</h2>
<p>In the hypothetical treasure hunt situation above, a simple map of the streets of London might be useless on its own. But in combination with the extra information from the folk songs, it might actually be useful – it might help us get to the South Bank treasure trove. Indeed, alternative research methods can be (and often are) complements rather than substitutes. There are many concrete real-world situations where new insights emerge from combining quantitative and qualitative research methods.</p>
<p>For example, <a href="https://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2013/12/randomised-control-trials">randomised policy evaluations</a> can be complemented with qualitative methods to help uncover the underlying mechanisms that produce quantifiable outcomes. Here’s a concrete instance: in a multi-country impact evaluation of interventions aimed at improving women’s empowerment, qualitative studies are being <a href="https://www.poverty-action.org/blog/encouraging-mixed-methods-impact-evaluations-women%E2%80%99s-empowerment-economist%E2%80%99s-perspective">used</a> to unpack the role that social norms have in perpetuating barriers to women’s empowerment.</p>
<p>There are many other fascinating examples that illustrate the power of combining methods in the social sciences. Researchers have been able to cast light on the <a href="https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/74b3/77a99ceeae27d29dc50f9cba263e1bf96b52.pdf">economics of street prostitution</a> in Chicago by combining official arrest records with data on “tricks” (transactions) collected in cooperation with sex workers; and we have been able to learn about the workings of deliberative democracy in South India from <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2084387">research</a> that combines data from linguistic divisions, household surveys, and transcripts from discussions in village parliaments.</p>
<p>There is plenty of evidence showing the potential of multidisciplinary research. Social scientists, economists included, would all benefit from explaining what they do better, while trying harder to identify opportunities for collaboration.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/91456/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Esteban Ortiz-Ospina receives funding from the project Our World in Data – all funders of this project are listed here: <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/about">https://ourworldindata.org/about</a></span></em></p>Economists try to create and use maps to navigate the world of human choices. But in some ways, these maps are limited.Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, Research Associate, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/843882017-11-03T13:28:41Z2017-11-03T13:28:41ZHow to overcome phallus-obsessed, toxic masculinity<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192240/original/file-20171027-13340-1il9ja6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Svetlana Turchenick/Shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Masculinity is often, these days, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/23/toxic-masculinity-men-privilege-emotions-rizzle-kicks">described as “toxic”</a>. In May, Hillary Clinton spoke at a gala where “toxic masculinity” <a href="https://theslot.jezebel.com/hillary-clinton-reminded-planned-parenthood-gala-to-re-1794881267">cocktails</a> were reported to have been served. Toxic masculinity even has its own <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_masculinity">Wikipedia entry</a>.</p>
<p>Against this, attempts to change masculinity are growing. Bestsellers by <a href="https://www.bitebackpublishing.com/books/be-a-man">Chris Hemmings</a>, artist <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/23/descent-of-man-masculinity-grayson-perry-review-a-mans-man-is-yesterdays-hero-gender-role">Grayson Perry</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/aug/20/robert-webb-autobiography-how-not-to-be-a-boy-peep-show">Robert Webb</a> interrogate their own biographies to challenge what it means to be a man and identify the damage that can be done through the pursuit of stereotypes that cut men off from others, their feelings and understandings – and indeed from their own experience. This hurts more than just men as individuals. It is also implicitly institutionalised by the places where we work – where men still usually dominate. </p>
<p>But why is it so hard to release men from the dominant understanding of what it is to be masculine? How do we make it acceptable for men not to reproduce patriarchal behaviours – to allow them to adopt more emotionally resonant and “tender” forms of masculinity? It’s hard because what it means to be masculine – strong, brave, power-hungry, in control, unemotional unless angry or in competition – is just an expression of one hegemonic metaphorical form: penis-obsessed and power-hungry phallic masculinity. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190663/original/file-20171017-30394-d7n0x5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190663/original/file-20171017-30394-d7n0x5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190663/original/file-20171017-30394-d7n0x5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190663/original/file-20171017-30394-d7n0x5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190663/original/file-20171017-30394-d7n0x5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190663/original/file-20171017-30394-d7n0x5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190663/original/file-20171017-30394-d7n0x5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Penguin</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But the powerful phallus has never been the only masculine metaphor available. Throughout history, two alternative metaphors – based around the testes and semen – offered fruitful alternatives to bring out very different sides of masculinity. </p>
<p>Over the past decade, <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0018726714558146">we have researched</a> all three metaphors, looking at how they impact on organisations, working in the background to shape what people pay attention to, how they act as a consequence – and what they feel about the result. We consulted historical texts and archaeological sources, anthropological studies, medical papers, psychoanalytic accounts, popular literature, studies of contemporary masculinity and contributions to the sociology of organisations. We charted a way through these incredibly varied masculine forms, identifying more caring and creative alternatives to build on Perry’s call for tenderness.</p>
<h2>Phallic masculinity</h2>
<p>Phallic masculinity underpins the social formation of patriarchy. Yet its early manifestations were not equated with the lust for power that defines it today. The earliest phallic objects, found in southern Germany, are some 28,000 years old. </p>
<p>Initially, the phallus was more associated with natural fertility. The Egyptian God Min, for example shows an ample erection in the left hand and an agricultural flail in the right. In some cultures it was seen as a bridge or means of relational connection rather than domination. For the ancient Greeks, the penis had creative associations, seen as a sort of Merlin’s wand. The ever-ready Priapus was also the god of vegetable gardens, beehives, flocks and vineyards. Being “a dick”, then, was not necessarily pejorative in those times. But unless you were a god and it went with your responsibilities, a large phallus was regarded as excessive and crude.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190661/original/file-20171017-30390-1a7x4qq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190661/original/file-20171017-30390-1a7x4qq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190661/original/file-20171017-30390-1a7x4qq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190661/original/file-20171017-30390-1a7x4qq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190661/original/file-20171017-30390-1a7x4qq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=661&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190661/original/file-20171017-30390-1a7x4qq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=661&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190661/original/file-20171017-30390-1a7x4qq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=661&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">First-century (Roman) sculpture of Priapus.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mus%C3%A9e_Picardie_Arch%C3%A9o_03.jpg#/media/File:Mus%C3%A9e_Picardie_Arch%C3%A9o_03.jpg">Musée Picardie Archéo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For the Romans, the phallus became more of a power-centred battering ram. A large Roman phallus was a sign of status, the ability to protect and vanquish evil. This can be seen in statues and amulets of the period, a view that embedded itself in Western cultures. Male gods displaced Earth-mother deities, and the dominance of the phallus was enacted less through physical displays of power and more from symbolic displays of control.</p>
<p>Despite the obsession with control, a phallic understanding of masculinity is not always entirely negative. Benign patriarchy, for example, could be seen as well-intentioned benevolent discipline (“tough love”). At their best, such patriarchs tempered control with a touch of care and charity, even generosity. The control element might be subtle and imperceptible. But today, being “a dick” is hardly associated with tender emotions. Phallic metaphors have now become largely negative – associated with tight hierarchical control, intense competition and obsessive zero tolerance of error.</p>
<h2>Testicular masculinity</h2>
<p>Before the Romans, metaphors that involved the testicles dictated what was understood by masculinity just as much as phallic ones. Testicles were associated with fertility, strength and energy in early religious texts. </p>
<p>But the testicles of the sexually potent Egyptian god Seth came to represent savage, undifferentiated elemental forces. And these required taming. By the Roman period, the “family jewels” began to be seen as the source of passions that distracted from divine motivations and masculine phallic control.</p>
<p>This led to the development of castration cults. Devotees would run through the streets cutting off their own equipment as they went, throwing it into nearby houses. Catching a set was supposedly a blessing, like a bizarre bride’s bouquet. Amazingly, these cults were so popular they had to be banned in some countries. A surviving practice was even found in a central Russian Coptic sect – the <a href="https://www.rbth.com/politics_and_society/2016/08/25/the-skoptsy-the-story-of-the-russian-sect-that-maimed-for-its-beliefs_624175">Skoptsy</a> – as late as the 1960s.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190665/original/file-20171017-30379-nmfs5t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190665/original/file-20171017-30379-nmfs5t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190665/original/file-20171017-30379-nmfs5t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190665/original/file-20171017-30379-nmfs5t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190665/original/file-20171017-30379-nmfs5t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=642&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190665/original/file-20171017-30379-nmfs5t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=642&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190665/original/file-20171017-30379-nmfs5t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=642&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Skoptsy man and woman.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skoptsy#/media/File:Skoptsy_man_and_woman.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Today’s testicles are symbolically associated with bravery and confidence, “having the balls” to do something. Classic coaching behaviour, for example, aims to develop a capacity in others to have the machismo or <em>“cojones”</em> to assert oneself. This supports initiative and develops individual resilience, familiar in teams. But the same metaphor can encourage a more divisive competitive environment. General “clubbiness” can degenerate into rivalry. Cheating, ostensive display and addictive risk taking all feed off “the testosterone in the room”.</p>
<h2>Seminal masculinity</h2>
<p>In a postmodern world, perhaps the traditionally perceived virtues of both phallic and testicular masculinity are less relevant. A more creative alternative may be needed. Semen has long been seen as a “precious fluid” – a source of renewal. Think of the biblical Onan, who was sentenced to death by God as punishment for coitus interruptus. Tribes in New Guinea, meanwhile, had a <a href="https://sexselvesandsociety.wordpress.com/2014/04/25/semen-sippin-sambians/">semen-swallowing ritual</a> for young males to acquire the strength and wisdom of their elders. </p>
<p>In the West, ideas about semen bifurcated in recent centuries. For 18th-century physician Samuel Tissot, loss of semen depleted bodily vitality and even jettisoned one’s capacity to reason. Admirers of this perspective included Napoleon, Kant and Voltaire. Tissot’s influence extended well into the 20th century. The 19th-century American poet Walt Whitman, on the other hand, thought of semen as a renewable resource, symbolic of boundless creativity.</p>
<p>Today, we’re familiar with the idea of a seminal contribution – a “seed” that inspires new departures in knowledge, culture and style, whether it’s Böhr or the Beatles. Such inspiration is what seminal masculinity at its best offers. </p>
<p>But the problem with inspiration is that it requires a leadership style that disseminates and leaves its seeds to grow relatively autonomously, with a little supportive curation. And so it loses its creative power when attached to phallic conservation. Original academics, for example, are disciplined by the peer review process to honour their masters. Likewise, entrepreneurs are brought to book by dragons. Donald Trump and Alan Sugar, as businessmen, do not strike us as being seminal. Neither was Hugh Hefner. Well, not in the way we mean.</p>
<h2>Tender masculinity</h2>
<p>But of course, not all men conform to the phallic archetype. Hemmings, Perry and Webb give us plenty of examples of how they can be damaged when they do. But what prevents them from breaking out of this archetype are the deeply entrenched modes of thought that underlie the behaviours they report.</p>
<p><a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0018726714558146">Our research</a> lays bare the metaphorical anatomy of masculinity and provides a more sophisticated lens through which to reconfigure it. Perry offers us a petrol-head metaphor: “men need to look inside themselves (open the bonnet), become more aware of their feelings (read the manual), and start adapting (upgrade)”. We don’t disagree with the sentiment behind this, but it’s still essentially phallic imagery: control, follow instructions, replace, fix, adjust, improve. It’s well meant, but it’s not collaborative, and it’s not relational. Don’t mention your tools.</p>
<p>Masculinity is not a matter of one metaphor displacing another. It’s a weave of all three. We need to understand that weave and reflect on it. Then we can set the conditions for greater emphasis on the seminal and a more collaborative embrace of the feminine.</p>
<p>There’s an old adage that unless behaviour changes nothing changes. But unless the way we think changes, new behaviours tend to revert to type. New practices need new modes of representation, new ways of thinking. Constructing a more tender and adaptable form of masculinity is not a matter of winning, or of refusing to compete. Instead, we must learn to speak differently.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84388/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Throughout history, metaphors based around the testes and semen brought out very different sides of masculinity.Stephen A. Linstead, Professor of Critical Management, University of YorkGarance Maréchal, Lecturer in Strategic Management, University of LiverpoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/730282017-03-06T02:14:58Z2017-03-06T02:14:58ZCommunicating climate change: Focus on the framing, not just the facts<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/159340/original/image-20170303-29002-1h47na1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">How you package the information matters.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/picture-frame-desert-386830909">Frame image via www.shutterstock.com.</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Humans are currently in a war against global warming. Or is it a race against global warming? Or maybe it’s just a problem we have to deal with?</p>
<p>If you already consider climate change a pressing issue, you might not think carefully about the way you talk about it – regardless of how you discuss it, you already think of global warming as a problem. But the way we talk about climate change affects the way people think about it.</p>
<p>For scientific evidence to shape people’s actions – both personal behaviors like recycling and choices on policies to vote for – it’s crucial that science be communicated to the public effectively. Social scientists have been increasingly studying the science of science communication, to better understand what does and does not work for discussing different scientific topics. It turns out the language you use and how you frame the discussion can make a big difference.</p>
<h2>The paradox of science communication</h2>
<p>“Never have human societies known so much about mitigating the dangers they faced <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2562025">but agreed so little</a> about what they collectively know,” writes Yale law professor <a href="http://www.culturalcognition.net/kahan/">Dan Kahan</a>, a leading researcher in the science of science communication.</p>
<p><a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/pops.12244">Kahan’s work</a> shows that just because someone has scientific knowledge, he or she won’t necessarily hold science-supported beliefs about controversial topics like global warming, private gun possession or fracking.</p>
<p>Instead, <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/488255a">beliefs are shaped by the social groups</a> people consider themselves to be a part of. We’re all simultaneously members of many social groups – based, for example, on political or religious affiliation, occupation or sexuality. If people are confronted with scientific evidence that seems to attack their group’s values, they’re likely to become defensive. They may consider the evidence they’ve encountered to be flawed, and strengthen their conviction in their prior beliefs.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, scientific evidence does sometimes contradict some groups’ values. For example, some religious people trust a strict reading of the Bible: God said there would be four seasons, and hot and cold, so they don’t worry about the patterns in climate that alarm scientists. In cases like this one, how can communicators get their message across? </p>
<p>A growing body of research suggests that instead of bombarding people with piles of evidence, science communicators can focus more on how they present it. The problem isn’t that people haven’t been given enough facts. It’s that they haven’t been given facts in the right ways. Researchers often refer to this packaging as framing. Just as picture frames enhance and draw attention to parts of an image inside, linguistic frames can do the same with ideas.</p>
<p>One framing technique Kahan encourages is <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/why-we-are-poles-apart-on-climate-change-1.11166">disentangling facts from people’s identities</a>. Biologist Andrew Thaler describes one way of doing so in a post called <a href="http://www.southernfriedscience.com/when-i-talk-about-climate-change-i-dont-talk-about-science/">“When I talk about climate change, I don’t talk about science</a>.” Instead, he talks about things that are important to his audiences, such as fishing, flooding, farming, faith and the future. These issues that matter to the people with whom he’s communicating become an entry into discussing global warming. Now they can see scientific evidence as important to their social group identity, not contradictory to it.</p>
<h2>Let me rephrase that</h2>
<p>Metaphors also provide frames for talking about climate change. Recent work by psychologists <a href="http://www.stephenflusberg.com/">Stephen Flusberg</a>, <a href="https://sites.google.com/a/oberlin.edu/thibodeau/home">Paul Thibodeau</a> and <a href="http://teeniematlock.com/">Teenie Matlock</a> suggests that the metaphors we use to describe global warming can influence people’s beliefs and actions.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/159332/original/image-20170303-29032-144rzey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/159332/original/image-20170303-29032-144rzey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/159332/original/image-20170303-29032-144rzey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=961&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159332/original/image-20170303-29032-144rzey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=961&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159332/original/image-20170303-29032-144rzey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=961&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159332/original/image-20170303-29032-144rzey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1207&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159332/original/image-20170303-29032-144rzey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1207&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159332/original/image-20170303-29032-144rzey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1207&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ready for combat?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/2346593616">Thomas Hawk</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The researchers asked 3,000 Americans on an online platform to read a short fictional news article about climate change. The articles were exactly the same, but they used different metaphors: One referred to the “war against” and another to the “race against” climate change. For example, each article included phrases about the U.S. seeking to either “combat” (war) or “go after” (race) excessive energy use.</p>
<p>After reading just one of these passages, participants answered questions about their global warming beliefs, like how serious global warming is and whether they would be willing to engage in more pro-environmental behaviors.</p>
<p>Metaphors mattered. Reading about the “war” against global warming led to greater agreement with scientific evidence showing it is real and human-caused. This group of participants indicated more urgency for reducing emissions, believed global warming poses a greater risk and responded that they were more willing to change their behaviors to reduce their carbon footprint than people who read about the “race” against global warming.</p>
<p>The only difference between the articles that participants read was the metaphors they included. Why would reading about a war rather than a race affect people’s beliefs about climate change in such important ways?</p>
<p>The researchers suggest that when we encounter war metaphors, we are reminded (though not always consciously) of other war-related concepts like death, destruction, opposition and struggle. These concepts affect our emotions and remind us of the negative feelings and consequences of defeat. With those war-related thoughts in mind, we may be motivated to avoid losing. If we have these war thoughts swimming around in our minds when we think about global warming, we’re more likely to believe it’s important to defeat the opponent, which, in this case, is global warming. </p>
<p>There are other analogies that are good at conveying the causes and consequences for global warming. Work by psychologists <a href="http://www-personal.umich.edu/%7Ekraimi/">Kaitlin Raimi</a>, <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/person/paul-c-stern">Paul Stern</a> and <a href="http://www.vanderbilt.edu/viee/profiles/Alex-Maki.php">Alexander Maki</a> suggests it helps to point out how global warming is <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0171130">similar to many medical diseases</a>. For both, risks are often caused or aggravated by human behaviors, the processes are often progressive, they produce symptoms outside the normal range of past experiences, there are uncertainties in the prognosis of future events, treatment often involves trade-offs or side effects, it’s usually most effective to treat the underlying problem instead of just alleviating symptoms and they’re hard to reverse.</p>
<p>People who read the medical disease analogy for climate change were more likely to agree with the science-backed explanations for global warming causes and consequences than those who read a different analogy or no analogy at all.</p>
<h2>Golden past or rosy future?</h2>
<p>Climate change messages can also be framed by focusing on different time periods. Social psychologists <a href="http://soccco.uni-koeln.de/matthew-baldwin.html">Matthew Baldwin</a> and <a href="https://lammers.socialpsychology.org/">Joris Lammers</a> asked people to <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1610834113">read either a past-focused climate change message</a> (like “Looking back to our nation’s past… there was less traffic on the road”) or a similar future-focused message (“Looking forward to our nation’s future… there is increasing traffic on the road”).</p>
<p>The researchers found that self-identified conservatives, who <a href="http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/10/04/the-politics-of-climate/">tend to resist climate change messages more than liberals</a>, agreed that we should change how we interact with the planet more after reading the past-focused passage. Liberals, on the other hand, reported liking the future-focused frame better, but the frames had no influence on their environmental attitudes.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/159338/original/image-20170303-29034-1fqougm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/159338/original/image-20170303-29034-1fqougm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/159338/original/image-20170303-29034-1fqougm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=825&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159338/original/image-20170303-29034-1fqougm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=825&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159338/original/image-20170303-29034-1fqougm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=825&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159338/original/image-20170303-29034-1fqougm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1037&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159338/original/image-20170303-29034-1fqougm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1037&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159338/original/image-20170303-29034-1fqougm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1037&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Example of a past-focused image (top) and a future-focused image (bottom) of a reservoir.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.pnas.org/content/113/52/14953/F3.expansion.html">Image courtesy of NASA. Used in Baldwin and Lammers, PNAS December 27, 2016 vol. 113 no. 52 14953-14957.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And the frames didn’t have to be words. Conservatives also shifted their beliefs to be more pro-environmental after seeing past-focused images (<a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/113/52/14953/F3.expansion.html">satellite images</a> that progressed from the past to today) more than after seeing future-focused ones (satellite images that progressed from today into the future). Liberals showed no differences in their attitudes after seeing the two frames.</p>
<p>Many climate change messages focus on the potential future consequences of not addressing climate change now. This research on time-framing suggests that such a forward-looking message may in fact be unproductive for those who already tend to resist the idea. </p>
<p>There’s no one-size-fits-all frame for motivating people to care about climate change. Communicators need to <a href="http://collabra.org/articles/10.1525/collabra.68/">know their audience and anticipate their reactions</a> to different messages. When in doubt, though, these studies suggest science communicators might want to bring out the big guns and encourage people to fire away in this war on climate change, while reminding them how wonderful the Earth used to be before our universal opponent began attacking full force.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/73028/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rose Hendricks receives funding from the NSF GRFP. </span></em></p>Are we in a race against climate change? Or is it a war? How does thinking of the past or the future affect your support for the science? Researchers are learning how metaphors and context matter.Rose Hendricks, Ph.D. Candidate in Cognitive Science, University of California, San DiegoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.