Is a difficult task literally heavy?

IF 0.9 Q2 LINGUISTICS

Metaphor and the Social World Pub Date : 2020-05-01 DOI:10.1075/msw.18032.ton

M. Tonković, M. Brdar, Kristina Š. Despot

{"title":"Is a difficult task literally heavy?","authors":"M. Tonković, M. Brdar, Kristina Š. Despot","doi":"10.1075/msw.18032.ton","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The conceptualization of abstract concepts is very often metaphorical, meaning that we think and talk about abstract concepts in terms of other, usually more concrete experiences. Recent research suggests that many abstract concepts are linked to bodily sensations. In two experiments, we tested a hypothesis about weight as an embodiment of difficulty. We hypothesized that participants wearing a heavy backpack would judge a psychomotor task to be more difficult than participants wearing an empty backpack. We also hypothesized that manipulation of psychomotor task difficulty would affect judgement of backpack heaviness. In line with our hypothesis, the results demonstrated that participants wearing a heavy backpack judged the task to be more difficult. The results of Experiment 2 demonstrated that, regardless of task difficulty, there was no difference in weight judgement when backpack weight was estimated on a 7-point scale. However, we found a difference in the judgement of backpack weight when participants were asked to express it in kilograms, where weight was judged to be lower by participants doing the easy task than by those doing the difficult task.","PeriodicalId":51936,"journal":{"name":"Metaphor and the Social World","volume":"10 1","pages":"100-120"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9000,"publicationDate":"2020-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"3","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Metaphor and the Social World","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1075/msw.18032.ton","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"LINGUISTICS","Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 3

Abstract

Abstract The conceptualization of abstract concepts is very often metaphorical, meaning that we think and talk about abstract concepts in terms of other, usually more concrete experiences. Recent research suggests that many abstract concepts are linked to bodily sensations. In two experiments, we tested a hypothesis about weight as an embodiment of difficulty. We hypothesized that participants wearing a heavy backpack would judge a psychomotor task to be more difficult than participants wearing an empty backpack. We also hypothesized that manipulation of psychomotor task difficulty would affect judgement of backpack heaviness. In line with our hypothesis, the results demonstrated that participants wearing a heavy backpack judged the task to be more difficult. The results of Experiment 2 demonstrated that, regardless of task difficulty, there was no difference in weight judgement when backpack weight was estimated on a 7-point scale. However, we found a difference in the judgement of backpack weight when participants were asked to express it in kilograms, where weight was judged to be lower by participants doing the easy task than by those doing the difficult task.

查看原文本刊更多论文

艰巨的任务真的很重吗？

抽象概念的概念化通常是隐喻性的，这意味着我们从其他通常更具体的经验来思考和谈论抽象概念。最近的研究表明，许多抽象概念与身体感觉有关。在两个实验中，我们检验了一个关于体重作为难度体现的假设。我们假设，背着沉重背包的参与者会认为心理运动任务比背着空背包的参与者更困难。我们还假设心理运动任务难度的操纵会影响对背包重量的判断。根据我们的假设，研究结果表明，背着沉重背包的参与者认为这项任务更困难。实验2的结果表明，无论任务难度如何，当以7分制评估背包重量时，对重量的判断没有差异。然而，我们发现，当参与者被要求用公斤来表示背包重量时，他们对背包重量的判断存在差异，其中，做简单任务的参与者比做困难任务的参与者认为重量更低。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

求助全文

约1分钟内获得全文求助全文

来源期刊

Metaphor and the Social World LINGUISTICS-

CiteScore

2.20

自引率

11.10%

发文量

期刊介绍： The journal Metaphor and the Social World aims to provide a forum for researchers to share with each other, and with potential research users, work that explores aspects of metaphor and the social world. The term “social world” signals the importance given to context (of metaphor use), to connections (e.g. across social, cognitive and discourse dimensions of metaphor use), and to communication (between individuals or across social groups). The journal is not restricted to a single disciplinary or theoretical framework but welcomes papers based in a range of theoretical approaches to metaphor, including discourse and cognitive linguistic approaches, provided that the theory adequately supports the empirical work. Metaphor may be dealt with as either a matter of language or of thought, or of both; what matters is that consideration is given to the social and discourse contexts in which metaphor is found. Furthermore, “metaphor” is broadly interpreted and articles are welcomed on metonymy and other types of figurative language. A further aim is to encourage the development of high-quality research methodology using metaphor as an investigative tool, and for investigating the nature of metaphor use, for example multi-modal discourse analytic or corpus linguistic approaches to metaphor data. The journal publishes various types of articles, including reports of empirical studies, key articles accompanied by short responses, reviews and meta-analyses with commentaries. The Forum section publishes short responses to papers or current issues.