The Brightness Metaphor Representation Of Risk Concept And Its Influence

Lakoff(1999)believes that human thinking process is based on metaphor,through which people can use familiar,directly perceived and concrete basic concepts to represent unfamiliar,difficult to understand and complex abstract concepts.At present,from the perspective of Lakoff(1999),it has become an important research content of psychology to examine the psychological authenticity of various abstract concept metaphors.The brightness metaphor of abstract concept is a process of understanding and representing the abstract concept through perceived brightness perception experience.In language expression,the risk associated with bright dark perceptual existence to a particular metaphor,people often use the brightness of the specific concept to characterize and understand the abstract concept of risk,for example,companies often use the "dark" data to describe those who may bring high risk of content,aii "risk" is commonly used in financial markets,"diablo risk","hidden risk" to describe the risks and more clutter.Based on previous paradigms in moral and power conceptual metaphors,this study investigates the mental representation of the brightness metaphor of risk concept,that is,the metaphorical representation of "high-risk--dark" and "low-risk--bright".And probe into its in consciousness and pay attention to the influence of the bias of unconscious level,in order to understand the concept of risk affect brightness perception mechanism,namely to the processing of the concept of risk will affect individual brightness perception judgment,the realization of the target domain to the original domain mapping,thus enriching the research field of the concept of metaphor in abstract risk.On the basis of literature review,this study proposed the research hypothesis that the metaphorical connection between risk category and brightness perception has the psychological reality,and conducted progressive research on the metaphorical consistency effect of risk concept and brightness perception at different levels through three related experimental studies.Experiment 1 explores the psychological reality of the relationship between the concept of risk and the metaphor of brightness perception under the condition of consciousness.Related studies have found that having subjects consciously sound out words can effectively investigate their responses at the level of consciousness(Meier,Robinson et al.,2007;Wang jian,lu zhongyi,2013;Yin rong,2014).Therefore,experiment 1 adopted the method of conscious selection.After seeing the risk word again,the subjects were asked to speak out the part of speech of the risk word,and then to judge which color block with different brightness was consistent with the background color of the risk word(in fact,the brightness of the two color blocks was between the background color of the word).The results showed that the subjects tended to choose the darker color block after the high-risk words appeared.After the low-risk word appeared,the subjects tended to choose the brighter color block.This proves that under conscious conditions,the concept of high risk and the concept of low risk are represented metaphorically with the concept of dark and light respectively.Experiment 2 further explored the influence of semantic processing of risk words on brightness perception under conscious conditions.Experiment 2 in order to avoid the possibility of guessing and random selection in experiment 1,two color blocks were changed into 5 color blocks with brightness gradient,according to Meier,Robinson,Crawford et al.(2007)and niu yiran(2013).1 represents the brightness of the brightest color block and 5 represents the brightness of the darkest color block.The brightness of the vocabulary background color is consistent with the brightest color block,the middle color block and the darkest color block(i.e.the 1st,3rd and 5th color block),and the target stimulus is the vocabulary background color matching the middle color block.The results showed that the brightness metaphor consistency of risk concept appeared again,and the subjects were more likely to match the background color of high-risk words with the darker color block,and the background color of low-risk words with the brighter color block.Experiment 3 explores the metaphorical representation of the concept of risk under unconscious conditions.Relevant studies have proved that the use of involuntary memory tasks can make the subjects unaware of the real purpose of the experiment,and the interference items made during rapid memory are unconsciously automated,which can effectively investigate the responses of the subjects under the unconscious condition(Meier,Robinson et al.,2007;Wang fei,lu zhongyi,2013;Jia ning,jiang gaofang,2016).Therefore,experiment 3,through the memory task method,told the subjects that the main task was to memorize risky words,during which there were interference tasks of color block judgment,so the subjects needed to quickly make judgments while memorizing words.The results showed that,on the unconscious level,the consistency of the brightness metaphor of risk concept still existed.If the color blocks presented after the high-risk words were dark color blocks,the subjects' response time was shorter and the accuracy was higher,and vice versa.This paper draws the following conclusions:(1)the brightness metaphor of risk concept has psychological reality;(2)there was a metaphorical connection between high risk words and dark words,and a metaphorical connection between low risk words and light words,which interfered with the perceptual judgment of the subjects;(3)the brightness metaphor of the concept of risk exists both on the conscious level and the unconscious level.