Serena Mon (IMAGE)
Caption
Eyes widen in response to interest and engagement. Then-senior Serena Mon, working with a team of psychology researchers at Princeton, discovered that pupils consistently dilate more in response to metaphors than to literal or concrete statements, demonstrating that even everyday metaphors — sometimes called clichés — engage our brains more than plain language. The researchers compared pupil reactions to common metaphors like “out of my hands” to both a literal paraphrase like “out of my control” and a concrete description using the same key words.
Credit
Geoffrey Mon
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