ABSTRACT English speakers use vertical language to talk about power, such as when speaking of people being “at the bottom of the social hierarchy” or “rising to the top.” Experimental research has shown that people automatically associate higher spatial positions with more powerful social groups, such as doctors and army generals, compared to lower spatial positions, which are associated with relatively less powerful groups, such as nurses and soldiers. However, power as a social dimension is also associated with gender. Here, by means of a reaction-time study and a corpus study, we show that professions that display greater gender asymmetries, such as doctor/nurse, exhibit stronger vertical associations. Moreover, we show that people’s perception of vertical metaphors for power depends on their own gender, with male participants having stronger vertical biases than female participants, which we propose is due to the fact that men are more prone to thinking about power in bodily terms, and to associate it with physical dominance. Our results provide clear evidence for individual differences in metaphor comprehension, thus demonstrating empirically that the same metaphor is understood differently by different people.

中文翻译：

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空间隐喻中的权力、性别和个体差异：知觉刻板印象和语言统计的作用

摘要 说英语的人使用垂直语言来谈论权力，例如在谈论人们“处于社会等级的底层”或“上升到顶端”时。实验研究表明，相比于较低空间位置与相对较弱的群体（如护士和士兵）相关联，人们会自动将较高的空间位置与更强大的社会群体（如医生和陆军将军）联系起来。然而，作为社会维度的权力也与性别有关。在这里，通过反应时间研究和语料库研究，我们表明表现出更大性别不对称的职业，如医生/护士，表现出更强的垂直关联。此外，我们表明人们对权力的垂直隐喻的看法取决于他们自己的性别，男性参与者比女性参与者具有更强的垂直偏见，我们认为这是因为男性更倾向于从身体角度考虑权力，并将其与身体优势联系起来。我们的研究结果为隐喻理解的个体差异提供了明确的证据，从而从经验上证明不同的人对相同的隐喻有不同的理解。