The Path to Women’s Candidate Emergence is Paved with Metaphorical Resistance: Limits of a Journey Metaphor in Provoking Identity-Based Motivation

Research on identity-based motivation shows that people are motivated to take action to achieve their long-term goals when they perceive a connection between their current identity (i.e. “today me”) and an image of an accomplished identity in the future. Research inspired by Conceptual Metaphor Theory reveals that this connection can be strengthened by framing goal pursuit metaphorically as a journey along a continuous path connecting current and possible future identities. Journey-metaphoric framing has been shown to improve motivation across domains, but no research has tested its potential effectiveness motivating political ambition. To fill this gap, we test whether exposure to journey-metaphoric framing connecting one’s current identity to a possible identity as an elected political officeholder increases women’s political motivation. We randomly assigned college-aged women enrolled in a leadership program to receive either a journey-metaphoric framing or an equivalent literal framing of their current identity and possible future officeholder identity. We measured several indices of motivation to participate in elective political office. We also content-coded the language participants used to describe these two identities. Results point to a potential motivational benefit of a situationally activated journey metaphor, but also highlight the persistent challenge posed by encouraging candidate emergence among women.