Power, Gender, and Individual Differences in Spatial Metaphor: The Role of Perceptual Stereotypes and Language Statistics

Abstract

English speakers use vertical language to talk about power, such as when speaking of people being "at the bottom of the social hierarchy" or "rising to the top".Experimental research has shown that people automatically associate higher spatial positions with more powerful social groups, such as doctors and army generals, compared to lower spatial positions, which are associated with relatively less powerful groups, such as nurses and soldiers. However, power as a social dimension is also associated with gender. Here, by means of a reaction-time study and a corpus study, we show that professions that display greater gender asymmetries, such as doctor/nurse, exhibit stronger vertical associations. Moreover, we show that people's perception of vertical metaphors for power depends on their own gender, with male participants having stronger vertical biases than female participants, which we propose is due to the fact that men are more prone to thinking about power in bodily terms, as being associated with physical dominance.Our results provide clear evidence for individual differences in metaphor comprehension, thus demonstrating empirically that the same metaphor is understood differently by different people.

To each their own: a review of individual differences and metaphorical perspectives on time

“…Indeed, recent lines of empirical research have begun to yield evidence that metaphors are understood differently by different people. For instance, gender may play a role in influencing people’s perceptions of power metaphors, with one study finding that male participants were faster to identify powerful groups when they were labeled as male and presented at the top of a computer screen ( Winter et al, 2020 ; see also Charteris-Black, 2012 ; Pérez-Sobrino et al, 2021 ). Handedness may also play a role in metaphoric reasoning: right-handers have been found to make more favorable judgments about objects that are presented on their right-hand side, while left-handers have been found to display more favorable judgments about those presented on their left-hand side ( Casasanto, 2009a ; see also Casasanto and Jasmin, 2010 ; Casasanto and Henetz, 2012 ; but see Sasaki et al, 2019 for contrasting findings in Japanese).…”

The (in)accuracies of floating leaves: How people with varying experiences of dementia differently position the same visual metaphor

“…It is consistently shown that the meanings of metaphors and images are highly subjective and contextual ( ño, 2020 ; Pink, 2011 ; Winter et al, 2020 ). Existing research that incorporates the perspectives of people affected by dementia currently focuses upon researchers’ analyses of people’s verbal or written metaphorical expressions ( Brown Wilson et al, 2021 ; Castaño, 2020 ; Golden et al, 2012 ; Johannessen et al, 2015 ; Peel & Harding, 2014 ; Thorsen & Johannessen, 2021 ; Zimmermann, 2017 ).…”

Exigencia de altura: un estudio sociológico sobre las preferencias de talla en jóvenes filipinos seleccionados en base a relaciones heterosexuales

“…When it comes to height perception, studies have shown that tall males are deemed to be more "masculine" (Griffith, 2017), of higher status (Stulpet al, 2013;Phillip, 2014), capable and competent (Thompson, 2014;Re, 2013;Watkins et al, 2010;Winter et al, 2020;Bittman, 2019;Murray and Schmitz, 2011), dominant and assertive (Re et al, 2013;Schmitz and Murray, 2017;Olivola and Todorov, 2010;Valentova et al, 2014), and respected and feared by potential opponents (Lewis et al, 2013). Height in males has also been positively correlated with cognitive abilities (Bittman, 2019;Adonis, 2011;Kobayashiet al, 2018), and social and financial success (Phillip, 2014;Bittman, 2019;Bargain and Zeidan, 2017;Adonis, 2011).…”