Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Metaphors can shape how people reason about complex issues,but most studies of metaphor framing rely exclusively onwritten materials. This is a significant limitation, as peopleregularly encounter linguistic metaphors in a variety ofdifferent communicative settings (e.g., read in the newspaper,heard on the radio, or viewed on television). Because researchfinds that variations in communication modality can influencemessage comprehension, retention, and persuasiveness, weexplored the relative power of metaphor framing in differentcommunication modalities. Across two experiments,participants read, heard, or watched a person describe fourdifferent metaphorically framed issues. They had to answer atarget question about each issue by selecting from two responseoptions, one of which was congruent with the metaphor frame.Results revealed a significant, similarly-sized effect ofmetaphor framing in every communication modality,suggesting that communication modality does not moderate theefficacy of metaphor framing.