When Metaphors Hurt or Heal: The Effects of Metaphor Use and Protagonist-Reader Similarity in Mental Illness...

Drawing on narrative persuasion theories and Conceptual Metaphor Theory, this study investigates how different metaphors in mental illness (MI) narratives influence cognition, emotion, and anti-stigma behaviors among individuals without personal MI experience. Using a 4 (metaphor use: war, journey, conversation, literal) × 2 (protagonist-reader similarity: high vs. low) between-subjects experimental design (N = 522), the study finds that metaphor effectiveness highly depends on protagonist-reader similarity. Compared with literal narratives, war and journey metaphors increased hope and subsequently MI social interaction and MI help-seeking intentions, but only when protagonist-reader similarity was high. When similarity was low, these metaphors reduced identification and discouraged both behavioral outcomes. In contrast, the conversation metaphor demonstrated desirable effects across similarity conditions: Under high similarity, it increased hope, which predicted stronger anti-stigma behavioral intentions. Under low similarity, it enhanced MI help-seeking through greater cognitive elaboration or directly increased MI social interaction intention. Together, these findings suggest that incorporating self-talk and inward conversation may be particularly valuable in metaphorical MI narratives, while also providing preliminary evidence that metaphorical MI narratives can produce stigma-reduction effects when aligned with audience characteristics.