Metaphorical framing is a particular type of framing that attempts to influence decision-making by mapping characteristics of one concept in terms of another. The purpose of metaphorical framing is to convey an abstract or complex idea in easier-to-comprehend terms by mapping characteristics of an abstract or complex source onto characteristics of a simpler or concrete target.^{[citation needed]} Metaphorical framing is based on George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's work on conceptual metaphors, which holds that human cognition is metaphorically conceptualized. Metaphorical framing has been used in political rhetoric to influence political decision-making.

According to conceptual metaphor theory, people think in terms of frames that are physically realized in the neurocircuitry of the brain. For instance, when a metaphor frames a specific issue, say gas prices, using the basic metaphor more is up and less is down, people will think in terms of up and down when they hear the phrase "gas prices are going through the roof."

Conceptual metaphor theory relies on the fact that people learn metaphors in early development through a series of the repeated pairing of brain activity and instances in the environment. For example, a child learns the more is up metaphor when seeing liquid being poured in a container and sees that the liquid in the container rises as more liquid is added. A part in the brain for quantity and another for verticality are frequently activated together forming a circuit that combines both concepts. The circuit that joins the quality and vertical part of the brain is the metaphor, specifically, the more is up metaphor. The more the neurocircuitry loops between verticality and quantification, the more the metaphor more is up gets instantiated in the brain.

Other research also suggests that metaphors originate in the brain. Specifically, Boulenger, Shtyrov, and Pulvermuller (2012) and others found that metaphors depicting a physical activity ("she grasped the idea" or "kick the habit") are processed through the brain's motor cortex much faster than literal language. The connection between metaphor and brain activity emerges early on in the processing stages at one-quarter of a second. When influencing brain activity, metaphors also influence the extent to which people pay attention to objects. For instance, people are more likely to allocate more attention and fixate longer on visual scenes when they read a motion metaphor such as the road goes through the desert than when they read the road is in the desert. Thus, metaphors are quickly understood, to the point that they are processed much faster than literal language.

Metaphorical framing involves mapping characteristics of a source domain onto characteristics of a target domain. In other words, all the work of metaphorical framing is done through the mapping processing, where the intended concept (i.e., the target) is conceptualized in terms of another concept (i.e., the source). Therefore, people need to have some amount of prior knowledge about both the source and target domains for metaphorical framing to be successful. One example of how prior knowledge affects decision making is the use of sports metaphors. A research study found that the use of sports metaphors can lead people to think more about an issue and be more susceptible to metaphorical framing if they liked sports. People who did not enjoy sports were not persuaded by the sports metaphor. One way in which metaphorical framing can be used regardless of prior knowledge or lack thereof is to use metaphors that are embodied, such as using spatial and motion metaphors, and culturally common metaphors, such as war metaphors or viral metaphors. Perhaps equally as important to prior knowledge is the strength of a belief in the target. If crime is framed as a virus or a beast, the metaphor would be ineffective if people have strong beliefs about how society should handle crime.

Metaphors are not just in the brain but are also represented in the knowledge structures people have in their long-term memory. For metaphorical framing to be effective, metaphors need to activate mental representations and associations (i.e., knowledge structures) in working memory—that part of the mind that temporarily holds information. When people process a metaphor, they retrieve knowledge structures about the source and to the target. The metaphor itself helps people map the knowledge structure of the source onto the knowledge structure of the target. In other words, source and target thinking become one. Nevertheless, metaphorical framing requires that the knowledge structures people activate in working memory be structurally similar—have apparent mappings that facilitate the thinking of the source and target as one.  

Metaphorical framing is more effective when the metaphor is introduced first before a text or speech. This is because introducing the metaphor firsts allows people to use the metaphorical framing to think about the information that would be coming next, particularly when the information is ambiguous. That is, metaphorical framing allows people to interpret ambiguous information in terms of the metaphor. Moreover, metaphorical framing is also more effective when the metaphor itself is generative. That is, metaphorical framing works better people can continue generating more mappings themselves after processing a metaphorical frame.

In sum, metaphorical framing is most effective when it is present early, when people have prior knowledge of the source and/or target, and when the metaphor can be extended in novel ways.