A tangled knot of target domains

Assessing INTELLIGENCE IS BRIGHTNESS and GOODNESS IS BRIGHTNESS in an image rating task

Résumé

Recent experimental studies have examined GOODNESS IS BRIGHTNESS and a host of other primary metaphors. However, complex mappings such as INTELLIGENCE IS BRIGHTNESS have been largely ignored, nor has there been any attempt to distinguish their effects from those of primary metaphors such as GOODNESS IS BRIGHTNESS. The current study assesses both the nonprimary metaphoric mapping INTELLIGENCE IS BRIGHTNESS and the well-documented primary metaphor GOODNESS IS BRIGHTNESS in a visual priming task. The study finds that a bright background encourages photos of faces to be rated as both more intelligent and wellintentioned, though the background does not significantly affect either attribute alone. This suggests that two metaphors with the same source domain can reinforce each other. The study also underscores the difficulty in assessing a non-primary mapping in isolation from other factors.