The bidirectional congruency effect of brightness-valence metaphoric association in the Stroop-like and priming paradigms

Acta Psychol (Amst). 2018 Sep:189:76-92. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2017.10.006. Epub 2017 Nov 4.

Abstract

The conceptual metaphor theory (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, 1999) postulates a unidirectional metaphoric association between abstract and concrete concepts: sensorimotor experience activated by concrete concepts facilitates the processing of abstract concepts, but not the other way around. However, this unidirectional view has been challenged by studies that reported a bidirectional metaphoric association. In three experiments, we tested the directionality of the brightness-valence metaphoric association, using Stroop-like paradigm, priming paradigm, and Stroop-like paradigm with a go/no-go manipulation. Both mean and vincentile analyses of reaction time data were performed. We showed that the directionality of brightness-valence metaphoric congruency effect could be modulated by the activation level of the brightness/valence information. Both brightness-to-valence and valence-to-brightness metaphoric congruency effects occurred in the priming paradigm, which could be attributed to the presentation of prime that pre-activated the brightness or valence information. However, in the Stroop-like paradigm the metaphoric congruency effect was only observed in the brightness-to-valence direction, but not in the valence-to-brightness direction. When the go/no-go manipulation was used to boost the activation of word meaning in the Stroop-like paradigm, the valence-to-brightness metaphoric congruency effect was observed. Vincentile analyses further revealed that valence-to-brightness metaphoric congruency effect approached significance in the Stroop-like paradigm when participants' reaction times were slower (at around 490ms). The implications of the current findings on the conceptual metaphor theory and embodied cognition are discussed.

Keywords: Brightness-valence conceptual metaphor; Directionality; Priming; Spreading activation; Stroop.

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Cognition / physiology*
  • Color Perception / physiology*
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Metaphor*
  • Motor Activity / physiology
  • Reaction Time / physiology
  • Stroop Test*
  • Young Adult