Mindset Dynamics
By Rose K. Hendricks
When we encounter a metaphor, we rely on our various lenses, shaped by our experiences, to interpret and respond to it. For example, our identity, family dynamics, and culture — among many other factors — influence how we make sense of what we encounter in the world. These lenses affect whether we see a person experiencing homelessness as someone who has been failed by society or someone who has failed to make their way in society. Our mental lenses influence whether we admit defeat when we’re struggling to understand an academic concept or whether we persist in working to strengthen our area of weakness. They affect how much we spend or save, whether we find a friend’s joke funny or offensive, and how we vote.
These lenses can influence which metaphors resonate and which do not. Knowing the lenses or mindset of the community you are communicating with is helpful in selecting the right metaphor.
Scholars have many different terms and frameworks for describing different types of lenses we apply to understanding the world. Here, we present some of the ways scholars have thought about the various kinds of lenses we use. In subsequent sections, we describe how our lenses come about and how they’re related to how people use and respond to metaphors. Throughout, we show how recognizing the lenses through which we all use and interpret metaphors can improve communications.
The Lenses through which we View the World
Worldviews help us make sense of the world. Dake (1991) has described worldviews as generalized attitudes toward the world and how it works. They shape how people think about problems and their solutions. For example, people rely on particular worldviews to assess how seriously to take claims about environmental or technological risk (Douglas & Wildavsky 1982).
One framework for thinking about worldviews — particularly those related to assessing how risky any potential threat is — is to consider every individual’s predispositions along two complementary continuums (Douglas & Wildavsky, 1982). The first axis (often depicted laterally) ranges from individualism (emphasis on potential threats to the self and immediate surroundings) to communitarian (emphasis on threats to the collective, to groups of people including and beyond oneself). The second axis includes a hierarchical disposition at one end (considering people or issues that may compromise traditional hierarchies to be threatening) and an egalitarian one at the other (whereby things that jeopardize equality are perceived as more threatening). These two continuums are often depicted along opposite axes, giving rise to a grid with four distinct quadrants (Kahan, 2012).
People who fall in different quadrants are likely to consider different threats to be of greater or smaller risk. For example, people who are more hierarchically- and individualistically-inclined are more likely to consider immigration to be high risk, since it reduces the relative power of citizens over non-citizens (conflicts with a hierarchy orientation) and may seem to disadvantage the individual (citizen) who may fear losing their job or the availability of other social services to immigrants. People in the opposite quadrant — those who hold more egalitarian and communitarian beliefs about risks are likely to feel much less threatened by immigration.
Values are another lens that has an impact on how we see the world. Values generally do not change. They guide us toward particular ideals, such as benevolence or security (Rokeach, 1973; Schwartz, 1994; Triandis, 2002). Some scholars have suggested there is a finite (though potentially large) number of values that people in all cultures recognize, but the crucial difference is in how individuals and groups attribute relative importance to each value (Schwartz, 2012). Effective strategic communications should resonate with people’s values.
For example, using the value of shared prosperity to convey why it’s important to provide a path to citizenship for immigrants to America — explicitly pointing out that a path to citizenship brings prosperity for everyone in the country — not only has been shown to increase Americans’ understanding of how immigrants contribute to American society, but also increased their support for policies to assist undocumented immigrants, to update legal immigration, and to assist unaccompanied minors (O’Neil, Kendall-Taylor, & Bales, 2014).
Our different lenses are often particularly evident in our political ideology or affiliation. In the United States, people who identify as progressive or liberal often share a number of common views (on issues like climate change or immigration, for example) and moral values, such as inclusion, justice, and equal opportunity — where people who are conservatives tend to value tradition, protection of the in group and preserving the sacred. When we frame messages in ways that align with these moral values, people are more likely to support an issue. For example, humanitarian organizations appeal to the values of human dignity and neutrality within contexts of conflict, in recognition of the complex imperatives of warring factions to maintain moral and political legitimacy, minimize civilian suffering, while defeating an opposing faction.
A belief or assumption about how the world works is not set in stone; people can change their minds. However, we rarely undergo significant changes in our values or worldviews — so it’s unlikely that someone who believes deeply in the importance of inclusive immigration policies will wake up one day in strong favor of building an extensive border wall.
In fact, people often interpret or reject information based on their prior beliefs or ideology in a purely emotional and automatic way. We have a strong confirmation bias — that is, a tendency to seek out information that confirms our prior beliefs — and a disconfirmation bias — a habit of discounting information that conflicts with our prior beliefs (Nickerson, 1998; Taber & Lodge, 2006).
The various lenses described in this article present both challenges and opportunities for communicators. Communications that resonate with these beliefs, rather than challenge them or seek to change them, will likely be more effective in moving people to think or act differently toward social and environmental issues, ways of living and working, and how we act toward each other. Information that is in direct conflict with how we see the world will likely be discarded and can backfire
What do our lenses have to do with metaphors?
First, metaphors reflect the lenses we use to make sense of the world. Metaphors are a “window into cultural knowledge as well as core beliefs and values of a social group” (O’Neil, 2007). The metaphors most often used within a culture — those found in their stories and casual conversations, for example — reflect how they see the world and what they value.
For example, linguists have pointed to metaphors for time that are pervasive in Western culture — namely, that TIME is MONEY (evident when we say things like: stop wasting my time, I’m working on borrowed time, or we’re running out of time) — as a reflection of underlying assumptions about what time is and how it should be experienced (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). Similarly, Lakoff (2008) has described a dominant way of thinking about one’s country as a family. Our speech provides hints to this metaphor that may underlie our thinking — for example, we talk about homeland security and founding fathers. If the country is a family, then the government must be a parent.
Metaphors are also interpreted through our lenses. As we described previously, we interpret all new information through the filter of our past experiences and ways of thinking. Communications that conflict with the lenses through which someone understands the world are unlikely to drastically affect that person’s thinking. For instance, environmental campaigns often use language that appeals to moral concerns of harm and care, which tend to be more highly prioritized values for liberals than conservatives (Feinberg & Willer, 2013). Perhaps not surprisingly, liberals tend to report more pro-environmental attitudes than conservatives do. But when an environmental message taps into the moral concern of purity, which tends to be more highly prioritized for conservatives, they report comparable attitudes to liberals.
For example, researchers shared text and images about the negative impacts of climate change — framed using the moral values of fairness and care (liberal) and purity (conservative) — with participants holding different political views. They write,
“The purity/sanctity pictures showed a cloud of pollution looming over a city, a person drinking contaminated water and a forest covered in garbage. The fairness/care pictures showed a destroyed forest of tree stumps, a barren coral reef, and cracked land suffering from drought. Importantly, both messages ended positively, providing information regarding what people can do to improve the environment.” (Feinberg & Willer, 2013).
The researchers found that participants were more likely to say it is important to protect the environment through government legislation when text and images were presented in ways that aligned with their moral values.
Metaphors are not a magic bullet — they cannot instantly reshape ways of seeing the world that have been built up over time. However, metaphors can “nudge” thinking in new directions. That is, when people do not have strong prior beliefs on a topic, a metaphor might open new ways of understanding the issue.
As we described in some of the previous essays in this series, there may be a “sweet spot” of audience mindsets for which metaphors are most likely to be elucidating or persuasive — when a person has some prior knowledge about the topic but their attitudes are not too ingrained. Metaphors should be used to reinforce your message. For example, if you want to convey that refugees bring many valuable skills and perspectives to their new country, you may choose language that depicts refugees as vibrant contributors to a system.
In the UN Refugee Agency’s (UNHCR) Innovation Service, countering the perception of innovation as the preserve of a technical elite or domain of certain western profiles, language and metaphors that describe innovation as a mindset, culture or movement invite broad-based and inclusive identification with the desired methods and approaches. While the metaphor of innovation is technology acts as a pervasive framing for how people relate to new ways of approaching challenges, the Innovation Service employs storytelling and reframes humanitarian innovation work through a lens of culture and mindset change. In stories such as “Why innovation starts with the right mindset” and “Technology is for People”, the metaphor of innovation as technology is unpacked and rearticulated as a critical tool to not only shape the future of humanitarian response but to renew and reimagine the culture of humanitarian organizations such as UNHCR. This understanding not only benefits how the organization undertakes creative initiatives but also resonates with the worldviews of UNHCR colleagues across the globe who are dedicated to continue to provide the best services possible for displaced communities. Through shifting this lens of innovation, the Innovation Service seeks to continue to help colleagues make meaning of their work and ensure each person understands their potential to innovate beyond the techno-solution imagery that often shackles their assumptions on how they can improve their world alongside displaced communities.
Effective communications should include metaphors that resonate with the worldviews and values of the audience. Furthermore, by understanding how they see the world and their existing beliefs, communicators can use metaphors to connect to what they already know but help them see an issue differently.
Using metaphors that convey the communicator’s intended message without invoking language that is particularly polarized is likely to be an effective approach. For example, although American Democrats and Republicans tend to have largely differing views on the importance of socioeconomic diversity in neighborhoods, language that doesn’t use linguistic cues from either party’s typical discourse has been shown to increase understanding, shift attitudes, and boost policy support on the issue regardless of someone’s political affiliation (Volmert, O’Neil, Kendall-Taylor, & Sweetland, 2016).
In sum, here are five insights about our mind’s “lenses” that affect how we use and interpret metaphors:
- Various “lenses” — the dynamic and cumulative results of our life experiences we use to make meaning of the world guide us toward various understandings, beliefs, and actions.
- Metaphors we use reflect the lenses that help make sense of the world. Metaphors in language can shed light on our underlying assumptions.
- We interpret metaphors through our lenses. These lenses make us more amenable to the implications of metaphors that are aligned with our existing ways of thinking, at least to some extent, than those that aren’t.
- Metaphors can shift what we see through our lenses, encouraging us to think about an issue in new ways. Metaphors that describe a relationship between two concepts novel to us — but not fundamentally contradictory to our deeply held assumptions — can be particularly persuasive or informative.
- Metaphors are not a silver bullet. They cannot overcome the power of our core beliefs or most firmly entrenched worldviews. When communicators use metaphors, they should keep in mind the effects of how we see the world on our thinking, and appropriately calibrate their expectations for a metaphor’s influence.
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