CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 196Language, Metaphor, and CognitionAcademic and Historical Perspectives in PsychologyPsychology Research and Bibliometrics

The evolution of mental metaphors in psychology: A 90-year retrospective.

Gentner, Dedre, Grudin, Jonathan·1985·American Psychologist
DOI 10.1037/0003-066x.40.2.181
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

It seems plausible that the conception of the mind has evolved over the first hundred years ofpsychology in America . In this research, we studied this evolution by tracing changes in the kinds of metaphors used by psychologists to describe mental phenomena. A corpus ofmetaphors from 1894 to the present was collected and examined . The corpus consisted ofall metaphors for mental phenomena used in the first issue ofPsychological Review in each decade, beginning with the inception ofthe journal in 1894 and continuing with 1905, 1915, and so on through 1975 . These nine issues yielded 265 mental metaphors, which were categorized ac- cording to the type of analogical domain from which the comparison was drawn . The chief finding was that the nature ofthe mental metaphors . changed over time . Spatial meta- phors and animate-being metaphors predominated in the early stages, then declined in favor of systems metaphors, often taken from mathematics and the physical sciences . A secondary finding was that the numbers of mental metaphors varied . Metaphors for mental phenomena were more prevalent in the early and late stages of the corpus than in the middle stages (1935 to 1955) . These patterns are interpreted in terms of conceptual evolution in psychologists' models of the mind . In this article we examine historical changes in the metaphors used by American psychologists to de- scribe mental processes . Our aim is to use changes in metaphoric language to trace changes in the models of the mind that psychologists have held . It is by now accepted that researchers bring to their field of study a theoretical framework-which may be more or less explicitly conscious-in terms of which they construe the phenomena they observe (Koestler, 1964) . Moreover, these frameworks change

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1037/0003-066x.40.2.181

Cites

46 of 46 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Cognitive scientists have long recognized the importance of metaphors in scientific theorizing, from computer models of mind to neural networks to dynamical systems.

    “Cognitive scientists have long recognized the importance of metaphors in scientific theorizing—from computer models of mind to neural networks to dynamical systems (Gentner and Grudin 1985; Lakoff and Johnson 1980).”

    From The myth of the Bayesian brain (2025) · cites this paper as Gentner and Grudin 1985

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Gentner, D., & Grudin, J.
Affiliations
Medical Research Council (GB)
ORCID
Venue
American Psychologist
Publisher
American Psychological Association (APA)
Published
1985-02
Volume
40
Issue
2
Pages
181-192
ISSN
  • 0003-066X (ISSN-L)
  • 1935-990X
DOI
10.1037/0003-066x.40.2.181
OpenAlex
W2104723403
Cited by
196
References
46
Citations by year
2026: 1 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 4 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 9 · 2020: 5 · 2018: 20 · 2017: 6 · 2016: 3 · 2015: 4 · 2014: 9 · 2013: 5 · 2012: 1
FWCI
6.10
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
American Psychologist (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Language, Metaphor, and Cognition
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › General Psychology › Academic and Historical Perspectives in Psychology
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Psychology Research and Bibliometrics
Keywords
history of psychology, models of mind, conceptual evolution, spatial metaphor, theoretical framework, American psychology

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review