The Sweet Taste of Revenge: Gustatory Experience Induces Metaphor-Consistent Judgments of a Harmful Act

Abstract

Metaphors are common transfer devices that map concrete experiences onto abstract target concepts. We investigated whether a specific gustatory sensation (sweet taste) affects social judgments (here, of harmful acts) via indirect activation of an idiomatic metaphor (“Revenge is sweet”). After reading about a harmful act motivated (vs. not motivated) by revenge, participants judged the avenger and her action more leniently when they had a sweet (vs. neutral) taste in their mouths (Experiment 1). In Experiment 2, we disentangled the activation of target concept and judgment by priming participants with revenge before they read about a harmful act. Only after being primed with the concept revenge, but not after being primed with the similar concept schadenfreude, a concurrent sweet (vs. fresh) taste led to more lenient judgments. We discuss the role of idiomatic (vs. conceptual) metaphors in effects of concurrent bodily experience on social judgments.

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