Moving Hearts and Minds with Metaphors
Tuesday, December 16th, 2008
A well-structured metaphor can automatically trigger a cascade of emotions and thoughts that accelerate learning, decision-making, creativity and behavior change. Metaphors not only move my heart and mind but can also be used as a modeling tool (e.g. Zaltman’s Metaphor Elicitation Technique) to uncover the deep mental structures and cognitive needs of employees and customers.
In short, metaphors as well as similes and analogies are a powertool for cognitive designers or anyone interested in designing for how minds actually work.
In his recent book, Hot Thought: Mechanisms and Applications of Emotional Cognition, Paul Thagard offers an analysis of emotional analogies that is useful for cognitive designers. He describes three classes of emotional analogies including those analogies about emotions, that transfer emotions and that generate emotions.
