Metaphor and Intra-Attitudinal Structural Coherence

Abstract

Metaphor is ubiquitous as a persuasion device although the process by which its effects are achieved is still not yet fully understood. The study proposes that the trope's persuasive outcomes derive from an emergent structural match between linguistic and conceptual metaphor that produces coherence among the structural components of attitude; a literal-only message offers no such match and hence by comparison less attitude coherence. To test this proposition, four hypotheses related to metaphor's effect on attitude and intra-attitudinal structural coherence were tested by manipulating message type (metaphor vs. literal), knowledge of metaphor target/attitude object (low vs. high), and placement of metaphor/literal equivalent (message introduction vs. conclusion). Results provided moderate support for the predictions.

Keywords:

• Attitude Structure
• Emotion-Cognition Linkage
• Metaphor
• Persuasion

Notes

Note. Higher scores indicate greater persuasion and coherence.

*p ≤ .10.

Coherence, and its opposite ambivalence, are treated as individual level constructs in the study. Metaphors may reduce ambivalence at the individual level but may enhance it at the group level, as the research on metaphors and strategic ambiguity in organizational contexts shows (Eisenberg, 1984). Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for alerting me to this distinction.

Evaluations can be expressed as affective, cognitive, and behavioral responses according to the tripartite view of attitudes. Attitude-behavioral response coherence is more commonly measured in the literature.

Hypotheses related to metaphor novelty and prior knowledge were also advanced. However, the manipulations for the two variables were not satisfactory. To conserve space, details about novelty and prior knowledge hypotheses, manipulation, and results are not included here. Interested readers may contact the author for the stimulus messages.

The cognitive response data are no longer available for further coding of relevant thoughts for their direct relevancy to the message advocacy, that is, for their classification as central or peripheral thoughts. It could be that the central thoughts have the most contribution to coherence and the inclusion of peripheral thoughts introduces noise in the analyses hiding the true impact of the metaphorical messages. This methodological issue should be taken up by future research.

The standard procedure for calculating attitude inconsistency is to first calculate z scores, for say cognitions and affect, and then to obtain the absolute difference of the z scores as a measure of consistency, with higher scores denoting higher inconsistency (Crites, Fabrigar, & Petty, 1994; Eagly & Chaiken, 1995). See Maio, Esses, and Bell, (2000) for a comparison of inconsistency and ambivalence formulas.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Pradeep Sopory

Pradeep Sopory (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison) teaches communication at the University of Memphis. This article is a reanalysis of a study that was part of the author's dissertation conducted under the guidance of Jim Dillard, whom he thanks for suggestions for a much earlier version of this article. Thanks also to undergraduate research assistants Geoff Walerak, Casey Hogan, and Julie Ginsburg, for their help with stimuli construction and data collection.