Word Associations

Abstract

Two purposes guided this study. The first was to test Rosenzweig's (1961) proposition that "associative habits are equivalent among different communities," and the second was to determine categories of associations characterizing two cultural groups. Continuous associations to 30 of the 1910 Kent-Rosanoff stimulus-words were obtained from a group of students in the University of Lagos, Nigeria. These were compared with the discrete data from U.S. college students in the 1963 Minnesota norms. When the three most popular responses from each group were examined, 42% of them were identical. The use of primary responses revealed, however, 20% equivalence only. The U.S. group emitted more adjective and contrast responses but fewer noun responses than the Nigerian group. Such response-type preferences may reflect basic cultural and personality differences.