Making Judgments Based on Similarity and Proximity

Abstract

In this study, we investigate the conceptual structure of the metaphor “SIMILARITY IS PROXIMITY.” The results of four experiments suggest a tight mental link between similarity and proximity. Two experiments revealed that people judge entities to be more similar to each other when they are placed closely in space, while two other experiments showed that entities are judged to be closer to each other when they are thought to be more similar. We discuss this bidirectional metaphor transfer effect in light of approaches to metaphor understanding, including the long-standing view that metaphorical mappings are assumed to be asymmetrical. We also consider the implications of this bi-directional mapping for high level cognition.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We thank Jesse Falke and Christy Banks for help with coding the data. We thank members of the UC Merced Cognitive and Information Sciences Program for useful comments and suggestions that informed this research. We thank Raymond Gibbs and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments on the manuscript.