Nathan Oxley

Virus or beast: how one word changes everything

How does a single word affect the way we deal with a problem? Last night’s edition of All In The Mind on BBC Radio 4 offered a striking example. Researchers at the University of Stanford worked with two groups of people, asking them how they would respond to rising crime in a city. Both groups were given the same facts and figures about the crime: the only difference was that for the first group, the crime was described as a “virus”; for the second group, the crime was talked about as a “beast”. In one of the experiments, only a single word (virus/beast) was changed - all the other information given was identical.

On the programme, Prof Lera Boroditsky, one of the authors of the research, explained that the results were as predicted: each group chose strikingly different policies, influenced by the wording. Group A went for diagnosis and prevention, aiming to analyse the causes of crime and “inoculate” the community with social reforms to stop it happening. Group B, who were encouraged to see crime as a beast, chose policies that tended more towards “hunting down” crime and criminals, impose harsher sentences, etc. The use of one word radically altered the way each group went about solving the problem.

This is fascinating enough, but it gets better. How did the groups explain their policies? At this point, they weren’t in on the secret. Interestingly, each group claimed their policies were based on the facts and figures given to them about the crime. Neither brought up the wording used. The metaphors of virus and beast had slipped into people’s thought processes unnoticed, and were all the more powerful for it.

The virus/beast research is only one more example of how words can have a hidden effect on the shaping of policy - from “floods” of immigrants, to “perfect storms” of food shortages and droughts in poor countries, to disease “emergencies” and “crises”. Of course, as Boroditsky points out, it’s virtually impossible NOT to use metaphor when talking about complex problems. Even where facts and figures are used, and even if they’re accurate and wisely selected, the images and words we use often push or pull us in certain directions, reinforced again and again over weeks, months and years. True, these metaphors can be helpful – but what’s even more helpful is to examine them, bring them out into the open, and reflect on their influence. We need to know whether it’s a virus or a beast we’re facing, or something altogether different.

• Thibodeau, P.H. and Boroditsky, L. (2011). Metaphors We Think With: The Role of Metaphor in Reasoning. PLoS ONE 6(2): e16782
• All in the Mind (5 July 2011): BBC Radio 4

This text was originally posted on The Crossing.

In the shallows

“The river here is thigh deep and its silky waters suspend you almost stationary as you swim upstream, like the countless minnows that nibbled shyly at my feet as I sat in the shallows, glad of the early morning solitude.”

(Waterlog, Chapter 17: The Wash)

Since I started reading Roger Deakin’s account of swimming through Britain’s waterways, I’ve been lost for a few lovely hours in his descriptions of swims in out-of-the-way places. Waterlog traces a journey through a hidden country of rivers, pools and streams often out of sight but within reach of the determined traveller. I still haven’t finished but I know the rest of it’s going to be good.

It turns out that bits of it have just been televised by Alice Roberts, who explores some swims inspired by the book. The programme’s great, but after reading the book it almost feels superfluous to watch it on TV (though it’s a good place to start if you want a taste). Deakin conjures up places and sensations so effectively that you can almost feel the weed brushing against your ankles as you turn the pages.

Waterlog is strikingly sensual. One aspect of that is the writing about water itself: achingly cold or refreshing, tingly, bubbling, muddy and endlessly ebbing and flowing like a living creature. It’s also great to be brought up so close to the subject matter. To understand the significance of water, Deakin has to immerse himself in it, observe it at eye level, and record what’s to see when you’re an inch from the surface: insects, birds and plants which he carefully names. That’s a treat and mystery for me, as I don’t know what pennywort, aechium, aeolium and damselflies are but love the sound of them.

There are notes of sadness too: the pleasures the book describes have been lost to many people, herded into indoor swimming pools and discouraged by warning signs and private ownership of riverbanks. This is countered, though, by magnificent lidos and enterprising swimming clubs keeping the joys of open-air swimming alive.

Deakin’s love of the natural world permeates the book, as does his admiration and enjoyment of it. Water is supposed to have healing properties: if you’re looking for a book to cleanse your spirit after the indulgence of Christmas, I can recommend giving it a go.

Waterlog: A Swimmer’s Journey Through Britain

Procrastination

You may have thought, the last time you blew off work on a presentation to watch “How I Met Your Mother,” that you were just slacking. But from another angle you were actually engaging in a practice that illuminates the fluidity of human identity and the complicated relationship human beings have to time. Indeed, one essay, by the economist George Ainslie, a central figure in the study of procrastination, argues that dragging our heels is “as fundamental as the shape of time and could well be called the basic impulse.”