Finally, after searching for half of forever, I found the NPR (National Public Radio) broadcast we listened to part of on our way out to dinner tonight. It was quite interesting. Here is the explanatory para.:
While editors and journalists worry about whether a simple word choice could influence their readers, politicians take another tack. They use metaphors all the time, explicitly in order to persuade people to view things their way. Lera Boroditsky, a psychology professor at Stanford University, conducted an experiment to see just whether this kind of metaphorical framing really works. I will put the link, then briefly summarize below it what I recall hearing, so as not to spoil the content for anyone wanting to hear it "fresh".
NPR She said they had two groups of respondents, each of which was given a story about the rising crime rate in a fictitious city. Each group was given the exact same statistics and other facts,
but: for one group, the article read that the rising crime rate was a beast, and for the other group the article read that it was a virus.
The beast people's solution focused on punishment, and the virus people focused on social reform. Both groups said that the given statistics had been the main influence on their solution; thus apparently neither group gave conscious credence to the metaphor.
