Attitudinal effects of selected types of concluding metaphors in persuasive speeches

When Is the Federal Budget Like a Baby? Metaphor in Political Rhetoric

“…However, research has not supported this idea. In Bowers and Osborn's (1966) study, two extended metaphorical conclusions led to attitude change in the predicted direction; however, one of the metaphors had a negative effect on source credibility, and the other had a positive effect. In McCroskey and Comb's (1969) study, a metaphor affected attitudes but had no effect on source credibility.…”

“…One thread of this work argued that metaphor could change attitudes by enhancing the credibility of the speaker. Several researchers (e.g., Bowers & Osborn, 1966;McCroskey & Combs, 1969;Reinsch, 1971Reinsch, , 1974 suggested that, because speakers who use metaphor should be viewed more favorably, they might also be viewed as more credible sources. Because considerable research suggests that credible sources are often more persuasive (for reviews see McGuire, 1985;Petty & Cacioppo, 1981), these authors argued that speakers who use metaphor should also be more persuasive.…”

“…Several authors (e.g., Aristotle, 1952aAristotle, , 1952bOsborn & Ehninger, 1962) have suggested that skilled use of figurative language, such as metaphor, may lead to more positive views of the speaker because such language is more pleasing and interesting to the listener. To this end, we examined whether an audience views a speaker who uses metaphor as having a better command of language, as being more persuasive, and, as some previous work has suggested, as being more credible (Bowers & Osborn, 1966;Reinsch, 1974).…”

Metaphor and Attitude Accessibility

“…However, the results of the empirical investigations have been mixed. Some studies (e.g., Bowers & Osborn, 1966;Hitchon, 1991) found that use of metaphors in a message leads to more attitude change in the desired positive or negative direction while other studies (e.g., Whaley, 1991, Study 2) found the opposite. An answer to the question of whether metaphors really are more effective language devices than literal equivalents was provided by a meta-analysis of empirical investigations of metaphor and persuasion (Sopory & Dillard, 2002a).…”

“…The other theories of metaphor and persuasion investigated in the meta-analysis were: pleasure or relief (Bowers & Osborn, 1966); enhancement of communicator credibility (McCroskey & Combs, 1969;Osborn & Ehninger, 1962); reduced counterarguments (Guthrie, 1972); resource-matching (Jaffe, 1988); and stimulated elaboration (Hitchon, 1991;Whaley, 1991).…”