Watch your language: Metaphor as a source of available information

Abstract

Few studies have attempted to operationalize metaphor or measure its effect on receivers. This thesis suggests that the language used to frame information has a powerful impact on receivers. The experiment following the literature review shows that the use of a {family, plant, biology} metaphor cluster produces significantly greater donations of money to an organization. Better, though nonsignificant, results on other dependent measures were also obtained using the {family, plant, biology} cluster rather than the {war, machine, death} cluster. Theoretical implications and organizational applications of these findings are discussed and new research directions are proposed.