I have mentioned here before my love of writing and languages. In the last weeks, several articles have caught my attention around not only the healing power of writing but also how our choice of words & metaphors can influence ourselves and others. In the vein of wanting to wish you all manner of good things for 2014 I thought I could not do any better than to put words to the research….
Metaphors in Our Surroundings Can Trigger Thinking and Behaviour
During the last years I have taken myself out for a walk in the park daily if I can, but if not, then several times a week.
What started as a need to get me out from behind my computer and into the daylight for fresh air during an intense scientific research project, turned out to be one of the best daily habits I’ve ever made. It also transpired that I had a vitamin D deficiency, and so the daily boosts of sunlight were exactly what the doctor order, literally and metaphorically speaking.
As you look around you now, in this moment, what do you see? Do you see four walls or an expansive vista? The answer could influence your ability to think creatively. A growing body of research suggests that our sensory experiences can trigger metaphorical thinking, influencing our insights and behaviour without us even realising it. New research reveals ways we might be able to harness these subconscious forces.
Consider, for example, the metaphorical idea that the heart is warm and emotional and the head is cool and rational. In a study in August 2013 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, researchers led their subjects to believe they were investigating how people answer questions when using their nondominant hand. To ensure they did not use their dominant hand, the participants were instructed to place their dominant index (pointer) finger either on their temple or on the left side of their chest. Participants who pointed at their head answered test questions more accurately, and those who pointed at their heart were more likely to let emotions sway their decisions in a moral dilemma. The finding adds to a rapidly growing list of metaphor effects: past studies have found that seeing forward motion can propel us to “move forward” in a metaphorical sense and that feeling smooth textures makes a difficult social interaction feel easier (or go more “smoothly”).
In all these studies, the influence of the embodied metaphors evaded conscious awareness—the study subjects did not notice the connection between their sensations and their subsequent decisions or feelings. Yet researchers think we might be able to use this effect by altering our surroundings and habits, such as choosing office art that evokes forward motion. If you are actively touching an object with the expectation that it will change your view of a situation, it might not work right away,” explains Joshua Ackerman, a psychologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- nology and a co-author of the smoothness study. “But if you make such be- havior a habit, you will gradually stop thinking about the connection, and it will then have a stronger effect.”
In a similar vein, freeing yourself from perceived constraints may indeed facilitate “thinking outside the box.” In a series of experiments published in May 2012 in Psychological Science, scientists tested participants’ creative thinking while they literally sat inside or outside a cardboard box. Other participants either walked freely or along the path of a rectangle. Subjects who were outside the box in either sense scored higher on standard measures of creative thinking. You can imagine that this means you might be able to encourage your own creativity by eliminating constraints to movement, such as by strdiing around around a room or wandering through a park. The key is variety and spontaneity: if you want to be more creative, run freely outside and do it randomly for the day. Get away from your typical route, time of day, music or even your pace.
In any situation, consider your surroundings, sensory perceptions and actions—they might be influencing your thought process via the subtle metaphors embedded in daily life.
Figurative Speech Sways Decisions
When pondering a decision or trying to convince others, think carefully about your metaphors. The implicit information may subtly influence decision making.
A study published very recently examined how reading different metaphors—“crime is a virus” and “crime is a beast”—affected participants’ reasoning when choosing solutions to a city’s crime problem. Those who read the beast metaphor were more likely to opt for a direct approach emphasising enforcement, whereas the virus metaphor elicited a preference for a systemic, reform-focused solution. A follow-up survey indicated that many participants did not remember the metaphor they read, and none thought a metaphor could have influenced their reasoning.
People don’t seem to consciously ponder the ways in which crime is like a virus or beast. Instead metaphors subtly structure the way the person understands the issue being described.
Previous brain-imaging research has shown that interpreting metaphors requires a variety of areas on both sides of the brain, compared with literal language, which is processed in known language areas in the left hemisphere.
Scientists do not yet know how exactly this pattern affects reasoning, but they suspect that the brain triggers related concepts when processing a metaphor’s meaning. So it is perhaps worth giving more thought to the metaphors you use and hear, especially when the stakes are high. Ask in what ways does this metaphor seem appropriate and in what ways does this metaphor mislead. Our decisions may become sounder as a result!
Expressive Writing May Lead to Faster Recovery From Injury
Expressive writing is known to help ease psychological trauma and improve mood. Now studies suggest that such writing, characterised by descriptions of one’s deepest thoughts and feelings, also benefits physical health.
In a study published in July last year in Psychosomatic Medicine researchers in New Zealand investigated whether expressive writing could help older adults heal faster after a medically necessary biopsy. In the study, 49 healthy adults aged 64 to 97 years wrote about either upsetting events or daily activities for 20 minutes, three days in a row. After a time lag of two weeks, to make sure any initial negative feelings stirred up by recalling upsetting events had passed, all the subjects had a biopsy on the arm, and photographs over the next 21 days tracked its healing. On the 11th day, 76 percent of the group that did expressive writing had fully healed as compared with 42 percent of the control group.
The researchers concluded that writing about distressing events helped participants make sense of the events and reduce distress. Long-term emotional upset can increase the body’s levels of stress hormones such as cortisol, which impedes the immune system. A paper in September 2013 in the British Journal of Health Psychology indeed found that writing about an emotional topic lowered participants’ cortisol levels.
The writing in the New Zealand study may have also sped recovery by improving sleep. Participants who slept more in the week before the biopsy healed faster, perhaps because sleep increaes many bodily processes involved in healing.
A Change of Perspective Can Offer Solace
If a past ordeal continues to trouble you, try writing about it as if it happened to somebody else: “She crashed the car,” rather than “I crashed the car.” In a study that appeared in February 2013 in Stress and Health, doing so led to greater health gains for participants who struggled with trauma-related intrusive thinking, as measured by the number of days their normal activities were restricted by any kind of illness. It would seem that third-person expressive writing might provide a constructive opportunity to make sense of what happened but from a safe distance that feels less immediate and threatening.
This is interesting in that there are several healing modalities that use techniques in which, for example, you re-envisage the trauma as though it were happening on a television screen, thus creating distance.
I love it when science catches up with the alternative & natural medicine world!!