Negative Metaphors Research Articles

Shooting Baywatch

Shooting Baywatch

Using Metaphors to Assess Anticipatory Perceptions of Personal Death

The Revised Death Fantasy Scale (RDFS) is an 18-item measure based on metaphors of personal death. It was constructed to assess psychological aspects of contemplating personal death, at levels of awareness less conscious than those tapped by conventional self-report measures. It contains two subscales: Positive Metaphors and Negative Metaphors. In several studies the RDFS has shown evidence of reliability and validity. The scale may be potentially useful in health-related research and in the training and support of individuals whose work is related to death and dying.

Metaphors of Hospitality Organizations

An exploratory study of 401 hospitality employees examined the metaphors or mental images those employees held of their companies. Metaphors constitute a powerful communication tool that influences the structure of employees' thoughts and job performance. Researchers assigned each metaphor to one of 18 different groupings that fell into one of seven overall categories relating to such factors as management skills, organization structure, operations, and power concerns. The researchers found twice as many negative metaphors as positive metaphors, and about one-third of the metaphors related to organization structure.

Metaphors of hospitality organizations: An exploratory study

Metaphors are used by organizational members to characterize their employing firm and to filter their experiences in them. Metaphors thus become an important source of diagnostic information for management. This exploratory study surveyed a large number of hospitality workers to discover the metaphors they held about their employing organizations. Seven different categories were found, about a third reflecting the organizations' structure. Among the tentative findings were the prevalence of negative metaphors and that longer-term, male, and managerial employees were more likely to hold them—perhaps because of managerial concerns for control and predictability.

The Death Fantasy Scale: A Measure Based on Metaphors of One's Personal Death

Abstract Conventional self-report inventories measuring attitudes toward death have been criticized on the grounds that they fail to tap important unconscious processes related to death anxieties and are contaminated by broad personality dispositions such as neuroticism. In this study, using Australian volunteers as subjects, we investigated a measure devised by Feifel and Nagy (1981) to tap death-related attitudes at a fantasy level. The scale contained two subscales: Positive Death Metaphors and Negative Death Metaphors, both of which were internally consistent and relatively uncorrelated with a general measure of neuroticism. The measure shows potential as a tool for investigating aspects of attitudes toward death and dying.

Rowboat in a hurricane: Metaphors of interpersonal conflict management

Metaphors are cognitive structures that help individuals understand their world. In interpersonal conflict management, metaphors can function as models for how conflicts should be negotiated. Hocker and Wilmot (1991) asserted that negative metaphors appear to dominate interpersonal conflicts. The results from this investigation support the prevalence of negative interpersonal conflict metaphors. The 349 respondents in this study used 6l6 interpersonal conflict metaphors that resulted in 28 categories. These data, however, contradict the categories previously specified in the literature. To highlight the function of metaphors as models of interpersonal conflict, the natural processes metaphor is analyzed to illustrate the (a) general nature of the conflict process within the metaphor, (b) role of the person using the metaphor, (c) role of the conflict partner within the metaphor, (d) power distribution inherent within the model, and (e) conflict management strategies and tactics encouraged by the metaphoric model.