Chapter 15: Metaphors We Kill By

Welcome to Last Minute Lecture.

This free chapter overview is designed to help students review and understand key concepts.

These summaries supplement not replaced the original textbook and may not be redistributed or resold.

For complete coverage, always consult the official text.

Okay, let's think about this for a second.

2005, right?

A Danish newspaper prints some cartoons featuring the Prophet Muhammad and the reaction.

It's explosive.

Embassies attack.

Churches burned.

People actually killed across several countries.

Or, try picturing this, Gettysburg.

Soldiers are just getting cut down, one after another.

Why?

Trying to stop their regimental flag from being captured.

A flag.

Or, even more recently, a teenager killed just for wearing red shoes because it was the wrong gang color.

Or people going on hunger strike over prison uniforms.

And what about those really bizarre My Way killings and karaoke bars over in the Philippines?

Okay, let's unpack this.

Why are people willing to kill or be killed over a tune, a flag, a piece of clothing, or even a song?

This isn't just a figure of speech we're talking about here.

We're talking life and death.

Real, tangible consequences that seem to spring from things that are, well, symbolic.

It really makes you wonder what exactly is happening inside our heads when symbols become so intensely, so viscerally real.

That's a really powerful way to frame it.

And yeah, it hits right at the core mystery we're diving into today.

Our exploration is guided by Robert Sapolsky's fantastic book, Behave, the biology of humans at our best and worst.

Specifically, we're digging into this chapter he calls Metaphors We Kill By.

So our mission really is to unpack how this amazing human capacity for symbolism, for metaphor, which has given us huge evolutionary advantages, obviously how it also sort of tricks our brains.

We end up confusing these symbols with literal reality.

And that confusion, it has just massive consequences driving some of our absolute best actions, but also, frankly, some of our very worst.

We want to give you a kind of shortcut to understanding this biological quirk, how it works, maybe why it evolved, and why it matters so much.

It really does set us apart, doesn't it?

When you think about other animals communicating, it's often so immediate, like a monkey's scream.

Something's wrong right now, but it doesn't specify what or hint about tomorrow.

It's tied completely to the present moment, the raw feeling.

Exactly.

That immediate emotional signal is worlds away from what human language lets us do.

We can separate the message from its meaning.

That's a huge cognitive leap.

You can see maybe stepping stones towards it in evolution, like vervet monkeys having different alarm calls, one for snake on the ground, so run up the tree.

Another for eagle overhead, meaning dive down for cover.

That's starting to get symbolic, allowing for a much smarter, more targeted response than just panic.

Metaphor, Sapolsky argues, is really the absolute peak of this symbolic ability.

It goes way beyond just describing things.

People like George Lakoff, the cognitive linguist, have shown brilliantly how metaphors aren't just fancy talk for poets.

They're baked right into our everyday language.

They structure how we think.

Think about it.

We say we're in a good mood or in trouble.

We grasp an idea.

We don't physically stand under something to understand it, but the language implies these physical states.

And that leaks into really important areas like politics, right?

The whole choice versus life framing or being tough on crime.

These metaphors really shape the debate.

Precisely.

But here's the core idea from Sapolsky, and it's, well, kind of unsettling.

Our brains, amazing as they are, are actually pretty new to this whole abstract thought game.

What we call behavioral modernity thinking symbolically, grappling with morality, empathy, complex social rules that's super recent, evolutionarily speaking, like the blink of an eye in the grand scheme.

So our brains are, in a way, kind of winging it when it comes to metaphor.

We're surprisingly bad, actually, at consistently telling the difference between the metaphorical meaning and the literal one.

Our powerful brains often treat abstract symbols as if they were concrete things.

And that confusion, as we'll explore, has massive, sometimes dangerous, real world consequences for our behavior, both good and bad.

Wow.

Okay, that's fascinating.

And this confusion, it's not just about high -level ideas or political argument, it actually shows up in how we process really basic physical feelings.

Yeah, let's start with something fundamental.

Pain.

You stub your toe?

Okay, pain receptors fire, signals go up, parts of your brain note where it hurts, how much, basic stuff.

But then there's this other crucial bit involving a region called the anterior cingulate cortex, the ACC.

It's involved in emotion, pain, decision -making, and it assesses the meaning of that pain.

Is it bad?

Like, oh no, this could be serious, or is it actually good news?

Like, hey, I just walked on hot calls and my feet only hurt a little success.

And the ACC isn't just for physical ouches, right?

I remember reading about that cyberball study that really drove home how physical social pain feels.

The ACC lights up there, too.

It absolutely does.

In cyberball, you're playing a simple virtual ball -tossing game online, but then the other players just stop throwing to you, they exclude you, and boom, the ACC activates, it registers that social rejection.

As far as those neurons are concerned, being excluded hurts in a way that overlaps significantly with physical injury, and it goes further.

Just watching someone else get hurt, or even just knowing you might get a little shock soon, can activate your own pain networks.

But flip it around if you see someone you dislike, fail, or suffer.

You might feel that little thrill shot in the foot, and guess what?

That activates your brain's reward pathways.

Your pain can literally be my neural gain.

So it's not just brain regions lighting up similarly.

It goes down to the chemical level, too.

This mix of physical and psychic pain.

Precisely.

There's a neurotransmitter called Substance P.

It's key for transmitting physical pain signals up to the brain.

Well, levels of Substance P are actually higher in people with clinical depression, and fascinatingly, some drugs that block Substance P show antidepressant effects.

It points to this really deep biological intertwining.

Sapolsky calls it stubbed toe, stubbed psyche.

It's not just a poetic phrase.

That is genuinely incredible.

So the ACC, and you mentioned the Insula, too, are key players.

We've hit pain, but they're also big on disgust, right?

Does that same blurring happen with ideas of right and wrong, purity, that kind of thing?

Oh, absolutely.

Think about biting into rotten food.

Your Insula, which is tied into gut feelings, bodily states, visceral emotions, it goes on high alert immediately.

You make a face, maybe gag, your heart rate might slow.

It's a primal defense.

Don't swallow that toxin.

And we humans, we take that physical reaction and apply it metaphorically, don't we?

We really do.

Thinking about rotten food activates the Insula.

Okay, seeing someone else look disgusted, that activates it, too.

But here's the kicker.

So does just thinking about something morally disgusting, a truly vile act.

Sapolsky talks about his own reaction to hearing about the Sandy Hook school shooting.

He says, Feeling sick to my stomach wasn't just words, he actually felt nauseous.

The Insula was reacting as if to purge something toxic, not bad food, but the horrifying reality of that event.

The line between symbol and meaning just collapsed.

So the connection goes both ways.

Moral disgust can make you feel physically sick, and physical disgust can influence moral judgment.

Exactly.

Contemplating something morally vile can literally leave a bad taste in your mouth, making food taste worse.

And this has wider ripples.

Some research suggests, for example, that people who identify as social conservatives tend to have a lower threshold for visceral disgust reactions.

And interestingly, just priming someone with a feeling of physical threat, like having them read an article about airborne germs, can make them more negative towards unrelated social issues, like immigration.

It's not that they're disgusted by the immigrants, but that feeling of physical vulnerability seems to bleed over, activating that disgust circuitry in relation to perceived social threats.

And then there's that whole Macbeth effect, right?

Where feeling morally dirty makes people want to physically clean themselves.

Ah yes, the Macbeth effect.

It's a perfect example.

People who are asked to recall something unethical they did, or who tell a lie in an experiment, show a real, measurable desire to cleanse themselves afterwards.

Like, in one study, after recalling an ethical lapse, people were more likely to choose antiseptic wipes over a pencil as a thank you gift.

Yeah.

And even more specific, if they told a lie verbally, they showed a preference for mouthwash.

If they wrote the lie down, they leaned towards hand soap.

It's like the brain is trying to wash away the specific type of metaphorical stain.

There are even cultural twists.

East Asians, recalling immoral acts, for example, might show a stronger preference for wanting to wash their face, perhaps related to the idea of saving face.

That's just wild.

It shows this deep, maybe unconscious link between moral purity and physical cleanliness.

And here's another twist.

Actually doing the physical cleansing can make you less likely to act prosocially afterwards.

If you lied, felt dirty, but then washed your hands.

You might be less likely to volunteer to help someone later.

It's almost as if the physical act of washing makes you feel like you've already paid your dues or balanced the moral scales, so you're off the hook.

Okay.

So our brains mix up social and physical pain, moral and visceral disgust, but this confusion between the literal and metaphorical doesn't stop there, does it?

It seems to subtly guide our everyday judgments too.

Oh, constantly.

And these aren't just, you know, fun little psychology experiments or parlor tricks.

They show a fundamental vulnerability, often invisible to us, in how we make supposedly rational decisions.

Our brains are constantly using the same circuits for metaphorical concepts as they do for literal physical properties.

And it affects how we judge people in situations.

Like that famous warm coffee cup study.

That's a classic.

Yes.

Researchers had people briefly hold either a cup of hot coffee or a cup of iced coffee before rating a fictional person's personality.

Those who held the warm cup rated the person as having a warmer personality, more generous, more caring.

Why?

Well, the insula, that brain region we keep mentioning, processes both physical warmth and feelings of social warmth or connection.

The brain is literally blurring the line.

So the fleeting sensation of physical warmth directly changes your social judgment.

That's pretty mind blowing.

And it's not just temperature, is it?

What about, say, weight?

Weight too.

Another study found that when people held a heavier clipboard while evaluating job resumes, they rated the candidate as more serious, more

important.

Huh.

So carrying a heavy briefcase might actually work.

Metaphorically, it seems so.

The literal weight lends metaphorical weight, or gravitas, in the brain's processing.

It's like our minds automatically think heavy equals important.

Okay.

Okay.

Note taken.

Yeah.

But seriously, this isn't just one or two weird things.

This pattern runs deep.

Even the texture of things we touch.

That too.

If you handle rough jigsaw puzzle pieces before judging a social interaction, you're more likely to describe that interaction as awkward or less coordinated.

Or try this.

Sitting in a hard chair can lead people to perceive others as more stable, more rigid, or unemotional.

And they might even negotiate more inflexibly themselves compared to someone sitting in a soft comfy chair.

Wow.

Your immediate physical sensations are unconsciously coloring your abstract social judgments.

You literally feel the world should match your seat.

It's amazing how subtle physical inputs can have these effects.

And it extends to our own internal states too, right?

Like being hungry.

Absolutely.

There's good evidence that hungry judges tend to give harsher parole sentences.

The closer it gets to lunchtime, the less likely you are to get parole, apparently.

Oh dear.

And generally hungry people are less generous in economic games.

Your own basic bodily need for fuel can unconsciously make you less compassionate, or giving in a completely unrelated social or moral judgment.

And what about distance?

Does that play a role too?

It does, in both literal and metaphorical ways.

Think about planning.

If you're planning a camping trip for tomorrow, you think concretely.

Need tent, sleeping bag, map, bug spray?

Very specific details.

But if the trip is months away, you think abstractly.

Need to prepare for an outdoor adventure.

Big picture stuff.

The same happens with spatial distance.

If you're looking at data about an office down the hall, you focus on concrete details.

If the office is far away, maybe across the country, you look for abstract, macro level trends.

The brain circuits for processing literal distance seem to influence how abstractly we think.

So weight, texture, temperature, hunger, distance.

These aren't just figures of speech.

Our brain is using some of the same circuitry to process the metaphorical meaning as it does the literal physical property.

It just underlines how easily our judgments can be swayed without us having a clue.

Exactly.

These aren't exceptions.

They reveal a fundamental operating principle.

Our brains consistently blur the abstract and the concrete, and it shapes our feelings, judgments, and actions all the time.

Okay.

So this leads to the big question.

Why?

Why do our sophisticated brains make these, well, seemingly basic mistakes?

Blurring metaphors in reality so often, it sounds almost like a design flaw.

It does seem counterintuitive, right?

But Sapolsky's explanation goes back to how evolution works.

It's a tinkerer, not some grand designer starting from scratch.

And behavioral modernity, our ability to think abstractly, use complex symbols, wrestle with morality and empathy, that's incredibly new on the evolutionary timeline.

A blink of an eye, really.

There just wasn't time to evolve completely new dedicated brain structures for all these fancy new cognitive skills.

So evolution did a bit of clever repurposing, took what was already there and adapted it.

Precisely that.

Instead of building, say, a brand new moral disgust center or an empathy module,

evolution co -opted existing brain circuits that were already good at something similar.

This is what scientists call exaptation or neural reuse.

Think of it like needing a chisel, but all you have is a screwdriver.

You might manage to adapt the screwdriver to chip away at something.

It sort of works, but it's not perfect, and it still has some screwdriver -like properties.

Ah, I get it.

So we're using these older metaphorical screwdrivers like the ACC for physical pain or the Insula for bad taste for these newer, more abstract jobs like handling social rejection or moral outrage.

And that's why the wires get crossed sometimes.

The circuits are doing double duty.

Exactly.

These regions were already good at processing intense negative sensory stuff,

physical pain, literal disgust.

So evolution just expanded their description to include these newer, more abstract forms of pain and disgust.

And there's some cool evidence for this.

You find these specialized neurons called Von Economo neurons.

They're relatively recent, evolutionarily, and they develop slowly concentrated right in these key areas, the ACC and the Insula.

It suggests some rapid specialized tinkering happened right there to handle these new tasks.

And we can even see hints of this in other animals, right?

Like rodents showing a basic form of empathy for another rat in pain, and that involves their ACC too.

So it's like other species are maybe on the early steps of this sane neural path.

That seems to be the case.

It reinforces the idea that we build our complex symbolic world on top of these more ancient emotional and sensory processing systems.

And this fundamental brain quirk, this tendency to confuse the metaphorical and the literal, it's had a huge impact on human history for terrible evil, but also perhaps surprisingly, for incredible good.

It really is a double -edged sword.

It absolutely is.

On the dark side, think about propaganda.

Skilled propagandists instinctively, or perhaps explicitly, exploit this neural vulnerability to incite hatred and violence.

They use dehumanizing metaphors, what Sapolsky calls pseudo -speciation.

The aim is to trigger that visceral disgust reaction via the Insula, to make people feel deep down that the targeted group them aren't just different, they're disgusting, maybe not even fully human, like

The Rwandan genocide in 94 is just the most chilling example.

The constant drumming by Hutu power radio, calling Tutsis, Inyensi cockroaches, stamp out the cockroaches, they plan to kill your children.

That relentless metaphor wasn't just words.

It engaged the Insula, it blurred the line, it made the symbolic feel viscerally real and threatening.

And the result?

Between 800 ,000 and a million people murdered in 100 days.

People killing neighbors with machetes, radios blaring those metaphors.

The rivers, literally, not metaphorically, ran red.

It's horrific.

It truly is one of the darkest examples.

But this is crucial.

There's another side to this coin.

That very same tendency, the way our brains give such intense, almost sacred weight to symbols, can also be harnessed for peace.

It connects to this idea from researchers Scott Atrin and Robert Axelrod about sacred values.

These are core beliefs or symbols so central to a group's identity that they feel non -negotiable.

You can't just trade them away for practical benefits.

Trying to do so is often seen as deeply insulting.

So respecting these symbolic non -negotiables becomes key.

In conflicts like Israel -Palestine, for instance, while practical things like land and resources are vital,

lasting peace often hinges more on symbolic gestures.

Things like apologies for past violence, or changing hateful rhetoric in textbooks.

These acts recognize the other side's humanity, their pain, their own sacred values.

They build trust in a way purely material concessions often can't.

Exactly.

Or think about King Hussein of Jordan at Yitzhak Rabin's funeral.

His eulogy was deeply personal, emotional, going way beyond standard political condolences.

It was a powerful symbolic act, a human connection, that helps cement peace between their countries.

Right.

Or in Northern Ireland, remember when Martin McGuinness and Peter Robinson long -time bitter rivals finally shook hands.

It happened after Robinson faced a personal scandal, and McGuinness offered commiseration.

That handshake, that symbolic moment signaled a real shift, a human connection beneath the politics.

And maybe the ultimate master of this was Nelson Mandela.

His genius and understanding and respecting the sacred values of all South Africans was incredible.

Learning Africans in prison, studying Afrikaner culture, peding that personal rapport with General Viljon, the Afrikaner military leader, speaking his language, talking about rugby, ultimately persuading him not to launch an armed resistance, but to join the democratic process.

And of course, that unforgettable moment at the 1995 Rugby World Cup final.

Mandela wearing the Spring Buck jersey, a potent symbol of the old Afrikaner regime and the whole stadium, black and white, singing both anthems.

That wasn't just good politics.

It was a profound symbolic act of reconciliation.

It acknowledged sacred values and helped pull a nation back from the brink of civil war.

These examples really show it, don't they?

Our brains tendency to treat symbols as profoundly real, this blurring of lines.

It can be used constructively.

It allows us to build bridges, to foster empathy, to achieve peace by acknowledging what truly matters symbolically to others.

It's the complex potent flip side of the dehumanizing potential.

So wrapping this up, we've journeyed through Robert Sapolsky's Metaphors We Kill By.

We've seen how our brains struggle to neatly separate the literal from the quirk, a result of evolution, improvising, repurposing older brain circuits for newer abstract tasks.

And it's left us with this incredible double edged capacity.

It underpins our ability to dehumanize others through metaphor, leading to horrific violence.

But it also underpins our ability to connect, to reconcile, to build peace through symbolic gestures that recognize shared humanity and sacred values.

It really makes you think, knowing now how deeply these symbols and even our visceral reactions from feeling warmth towards a stranger holding coffee, to feeling disgust towards a group labeled as vermin.

How might you consciously use language and symbols?

How might you engage with them to build understanding and connection, rather than fuel division in your own life and in the world around you?

Something to mull over.

Thank you for diving deep with us today.