The Metaphorical Representation of Affect

Meier, Brian P.; Robinson, Michael D.

doi:10.1207/s15327868ms2004_1

Cited by 198 publications

(119 citation statements)

References 46 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

107

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Physical experiences like warmth, proximity, height, and movement co-occur with emotional experiences, which causes these sensations to be bound into neural circuits with the emotions themselves (Lakoff, 2009(Lakoff, , 2014). These internal sensations can then be used to help understand emotions (Lakoff, 2014;Meier & Robinson, 2005). Moreover, invoking cognitive structures related to sensations influences emotional reactions and social responses (Fay & Maner, 2014).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is sadness blue? The problem of using figurative language for emotions on psychological tests

2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Psychological tests sometimes include figurative language like I feel blue. However, figurative language may not mean the same thing cross-culturally. Previous research found cross-cultural evidence for 14 conceptual metaphors and metonymies for emotions (e.g., sadness is blue). Our two studies asked participants (total n = 795) in the USA and India whether happiness, sadness, anger, and fear are associated with certain descriptors (blue, down, bright, etc.). Most participants in both countries endorsed ten of the 14 hypothesized associations; however, the percentage of participants endorsing an association was often far from 100 %. For example, in the USA, only 71.7 % associated hot with anger and only 65.9 % associated blue with sadness. Moreover, descriptors were often associated with more than one emotion. Furthermore, only two associations (happiness is up and bright) were endorsed by more than 90 % of participants in both countries and had descriptors that were not associated with additional emotions. We conclude that figurative language is often ambiguous and should be used with caution on psychological tests unless there is evidence the language is understood cross-culturally. Advice to this effect is currently lacking from psychometrics textbooks and should be added.

show abstract

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is sadness blue? The problem of using figurative language for emotions on psychological tests

2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…There are at least two ways of viewing such asymmetric effects and they seem compatible to us. From a metaphor representation perspective, abstract feeling states are to be explained, not perceptual experiences (Meier & Robinson, 2005). From a brain-based view, perception precedes conception and thus it is far more likely for perceptions to influence conceptions than vice versa (Dehaene et al, 2006;Rolls, 1999).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Anger as “seeing red”: Evidence for a perceptual association

Fetterman

Robinson

Meier

2012

Cognition & Emotion

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Metaphor representation theory contends that people conceptualize their non-perceptual states (e.g., emotion concepts) in perceptual terms. The present research extends this theory to color manipulations and discrete emotional representations. Two experiments (N = 265) examined whether a red font color would facilitate anger conceptions, consistent with metaphors referring to anger to "seeing red". Evidence for an implicit anger-red association was robust and emotionally discrete in nature. Further, Experiment 2 examined the directionality of such associations and found that they were asymmetrical: Anger categorizations were faster when a red font color was involved, but redness categorizations were not faster when an anger-related word was involved. Implications for multiple literatures are discussed.

show abstract

“…We have yet to find moderating effects of this type. Many of our investigations have focused on affective Personality Psychology 17 processes (Meier & Robinson, 2005). For this reason, we have examined the potential moderating role of attention to emotion (Salovey et al, 1995) in several studies.…”

Section: Investigating Metaphoric Processes In Personalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Toward a metaphor-enriched personality psychology.

Robinson

Fetterman

2014

The Power of Metaphor: Examining Its Influence on Social Life.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Conventional wisdom on metaphor suggests that it is the province of poets, metaphor is an optional way of thinking, or that metaphor merely serves communication purposes. In this chapter, we show that such wisdom is at variance with how human beings actually think and function. We first provide a brief overview of the metaphor representation perspective. We then make a case for the utility of this perspective in understanding how people differ from each other and do so within a broader context of how personality has traditionally been assessed. We then present four lines of personality research inspired by the metaphor representation perspective. We conclude with a discussion of the challenges and unanswered questions involved in translating the metaphor representation perspective to personality psychology.

show abstract

The Metaphorical Representation of Affect

Cited by 198 publications

References 46 publications

Is sadness blue? The problem of using figurative language for emotions on psychological tests

Is sadness blue? The problem of using figurative language for emotions on psychological tests

Anger as “seeing red”: Evidence for a perceptual association

Toward a metaphor-enriched personality psychology.

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About