Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Skepticism towards science has risen sharply in recent years.Cognitive scientists can help address this issue byilluminating how people conceptualize the scientific process,paving the way for improved communication with the public.We recruited a large sample of lay Americans, as well asacademics in the sciences and humanities, to answer a seriesof questions assessing their views about science. Becausemetaphors have been identified as useful tools forcommunicating about complex domains, we askedparticipants to choose which of two metaphors––working on apuzzle or scaling a mountain––best captured their beliefsabout the scientific process. Results revealed substantialvariation in perceptions of science across groups, and wehighlight the ways in which scientists seem to conceptualizescience differently from non-scientists. Importantly, metaphorpreference was associated with particular patterns of thinking,though not always in our originally hypothesized direction.We discuss the implications of these findings.