Positioned within the multidisciplinary scholarly fields of political psychology, our analysis follows an interdisciplinary approach, linking the study of EU images (from international relations (IR), political science and EU Studies) to the notion of conceptual metaphors (cognitive linguistics). Our research uses a novel empirical tool – a four‐tiered model of conceptual metaphors (Zhabotynska, 2011) to assess how meanings are formed in the construction of EU images in third countries. Using a case‐study of Australian and New Zealand elites, the paper contributes to EU foreign policy scholarship through the description of a systematic algorithm for tracing the ‘mapping of emotions’ towards the EU from beyond its borders. Metaphors are understood as a cognitive device for translating emotions, but empirical analysis of emotions is nascent in IR studies. Assessing EU external images over time in an empirically‐informed and systematic way is a further novel contribution from this body of research.