Firebreak, circuit break, or water break? The impact of metaphor on people’s perception and attitudes towards lockdown measures

Abstract Metaphors can influence people’s reasoning because of their ability to highlight or hide features of the target domain. In this article, we investigate the extent to which different metaphorical frames lead to different policy recommendations that best fit with the structure of the frame, as well as the role of age and gender to account for variation in the responses. We rely on four naturalistic metaphorical frames used during the media coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic: fight, fire, machine, and water. A total of 203 Spanish participants were randomly shown one of the five experimental conditions and were asked to (1) rate their perception of control over the health emergency and (2) recommend policy measures to stop the spread of the pandemic. To assess the extent to which participants had noticed the metaphorical frames, a third question was added where they had to indicate the words that had been most decisive in their answers. Results indicate that the fight frame increases the perception of control over the situation, but mostly for men and older participants; they were also more likely to prefer restrictive measures, whereas women and younger participants favoured a balance between restrictive and preventive policies. Finally, fire keywords were the most likely to be remembered by everyone, unlike the keywords from other frames. These findings shed light on the role of age and gender in moderating the effect of metaphorical framing.