We investigated the idea that people use metaphor to help make sense of text-based vignettes about everyday dilemmas. First, we found evidence for the metaphor framing hypothesis across 6 experiments in which framing descriptions of dilemmas within various metaphor frames influenced reasoners' decisions about how to resolve the dilemmas. Second, we found evidence for the metaphor processing termination hypothesis across 3 experiments: When a metaphor was not necessary to increase understanding of a dilemma or when it actually increased ambiguity, the metaphor framing effect was attenuated. In particular, when the vignette contained or primed knowledge that could be used to understand the vignette, reasoners were less likely to make decisions consistent with the metaphor, were less likely to rate the metaphor as apt, and were less likely to choose metaphor-consistent responses on a subsequent verbal analogy test. Results are consistent with a constructivist theory of text comprehension, which specifies the conditions under which learners use metaphor to make sense of text vignettes.
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