The Double Framing Effect of Emotive Metaphors in Argumentation.

In argumentation, metaphors are often considered as ambiguous or deceptive uses of language leading to fallacies of reasoning. However, they can also provide useful insights into creative argumentation, leading to genuinely new knowledge. Metaphors entail a framing effect that implicitly provides a specific perspective to interpret the world, guiding reasoning and evaluation of arguments. In the same vein, emotions could be in sharp contrast with proper reasoning, but they can also be cognitive processes of affective framing, influencing our reasoning and behavior in different meaningful ways. Thus, a double (metaphorical and affective) framing effect might influence argumentation in the case of emotive metaphors, such as "Poverty is a disease" or "Your boss is a dictator," where specific "emotive words" (disease, dictator) are used as vehicles. We present and discuss the results of two experimental studies designed to explore the role of emotive metaphors in argumentation. The studies investigated whether and to what extent the detection of a fallacious argument is influenced by the presence of a conventional vs. novel emotive metaphor. Participants evaluated a series of verbal arguments containing either "non-emotive" or "emotive" (positive or negative) metaphors as middle terms that "bridge" the premises of the argument. The results show that the affective coherence of the metaphor's vehicle and topic plays a crucial role in participants' reasoning style, leading to global heuristic vs. local analytical interpretive processes in the interplay of the metaphorical and the affective framing effects.

Creative Argumentation: When and Why People Commit the Metaphoric Fallacy.

This article aims to understand when and why people accept fallacious arguments featuring metaphors (metaphoric fallacy) as sound arguments. Two experiments were designed to investigate, respectively, when and why participants fell into the metaphoric fallacy. In the first experiment, participants were provided with a series of syllogisms, presented in natural language, containing in their first premise either a lexically ambiguous, literal middle term or a metaphorical middle term, i.e. the term that "bridges" the first premise with the second premise, and ending with a true, false or plausible conclusion. For each argument they were asked to evaluate whether the conclusion followed from the premises. Results show that the metaphoric fallacy is harder to detect in case of arguments with plausible conclusion with a conventional metaphor rather than a novel metaphor as middle term. The second experiment investigated why participants considered the metaphoric fallacy with plausible conclusion as a strong argument. Results suggest that participants' belief in the conclusion of the argument, independent from the premises, is a predictor for committing the metaphoric fallacy. We argue that a creative search for alternative reasons justifies participants' falling into the metaphoric fallacy, especially when the framing effect of a metaphor covertly influences the overall reading of the argument. Thus, far from being a source of irrationality, metaphors might elicit a different style of reasoning in argumentation, forcing participants to find an alternative interpretation of the premises that guarantees the believed conclusion. In this process, conventional metaphors are revitalized and extended through the second premise to the conclusion, thereby entailing an overall metaphorical reading of the argument.

Modulation of resource allocation by intelligent individuals in linguistic, mathematical and visuo-spatial tasks.

This study investigates two questions: first, how individuals with high-intelligence allocate cognitive resources while solving linguistic, mathematical and visuo-spatial tasks with varying degree of difficulty as compared to individuals with low intelligence? Second, how to distinguish between high and low intelligent individuals by analyzing pupil dilation and eye blink together? We measured the response time, error rates along with pupil dilation and eye blink rate that indicate resource allocation. We divided the whole processing into three stages namely: pre-stimuli (5s prior to stimuli onset), during stimuli and post stimuli (until 5s after the response) for better assessment of preparation and resource allocation strategies. Individuals with high intelligence showed greater task evoked pupil dilation, decreased eye blink with less response time and error rates during-stimuli stage (processing) of tough linguistic and visuo-spatial tasks but not during mathematical tasks. The finding suggests that individuals with high intelligence allocate more resources if the task demands are high else they allocate less resources. Greater pre-stimuli pupil dilation and increased eye blink of high intelligent individuals in all tasks indicated their attentiveness and preparedness. The result of our study shows that individuals with high intelligence are more attentive and flexible in terms of altering the resource allocation strategy according to task demand. Eye-blinks along with pupil dilation and other behavioral parameters can be reliably used to assess the intelligence of an individual and the analysis of pupil dilation and blink rate at pre-stimuli stage can be crucial in distinguishing individuals with varying intelligence.