If Saddam is Hitler then Who is George Bush? Analogical Mapping between Systems of Social Roles
Author(s)
Spellman, Barbara A.; Holyoak, Keith J.
Abstract
The analogy between World War II and the 1991 Persian Gulf crisis led people to construct a coherent system of roles for the participants in the Gulf crisis. The Analogical Constraint Mapping Engine (ACME), a model of analogical mapping by constraint satisfaction, makes predictions about the types of correspondences people are likely to draw between the people and countries in these analogs. Both a survey and an experimental study revealed clear evidence that people have a strong tendency to generate mappings that honor certain basic coherence constraints. General models of analogical reasoning may have implications for everyday understanding of complex systems of social roles.
