Introduction:
Word association testing is a technique developed by Carl Jung to explore complexes in the personal unconscious. Jung came to recognize the existence of groups of thoughts, feelings, memories, and perceptions, organized around a central theme, that he termed psychological complexes. This discovery was related to his research into word association, a technique whereby words presented to patients elicit other word responses that reflect related concepts in the patients’ psyche, thus providing clues to their unique psychological make-up. Word association testing has been used extensively in psychology to assess the personality of the test subjects. Projective techniques, of which word association is a type, typically present respondents with an ambiguous stimulus and ask them to disambiguate this stimulus. The underlying principle behind most projective techniques is that respondents project aspects of their own personalities in the process of disambiguating test stimuli. The interpreter of the projective technique can thus examine answers to these stimuli for insights into the respondents’ personality dispositions. In a typical word association test, subjects are asked to respond to a stimulus word with the first word that comes to mind. These associative responses have been explained by the principle of learning by contiguity: “objects once experienced together tend to become associated in the imagination, so that when any one of them is thought of, the others are likely to be thought of also, in the same order of sequence or coexistence as before”.
Test Description:
The Kent-Rosanoff list consists of one hundred words. These are seventy-one nouns, twenty-one simple adjectives, and eight verb forms. Of the eight verb forms, six may be taken as nouns (comfort, whistle, command, wish, sleep, and trouble), and two are participle forms (working, eating). The adjective and verb forms are interspersed with no apparent purposive pattern, and all of the words would be generally considered to be innocuous.
It has been generally accepted that a delayed reaction time indicates that the stimulus word is somehow connected to a complex, as does a failure of reproduction. Although certain characteristics of stimulus words tend to yield higher reaction times, such as low common-response words, this factor would be higher across the entire population. Because of this, and the method of using a reaction time of two fifths or more greater than the probable mean to describe a delayed reaction time, this should not negatively affect this study.
Jung also used the word association experiments to develop a hypothesis of psychological types, on which his later classifications ·were based. This procedure was based on the classification of responses according to a grammatical and syntactical scheme. Jung organizes this material as follows: Internal Associations 1. Coordination (cat-animal, lake-depth) a. simple contrasts (good-bad) 2. Predicates a. value judgments (mother-good) b. other predicates (snake-poisonous) c. definitions (ink-fluid for pens) External Associations 4. Co-existence (ink-pen) 5. Identity (expensive-costly). This is different from definitions in that the former are multiple word reactions, and identities are single word responses. 6. Linguistic-mater Forms (needle-holder, hunger-suffer) a. linguistic-motor contrast (sweet-sour, light-dark) Sound Reactions 7. Word Completion (wonder-ful) 8. Sound (humility-humidity) 9. Rhyme (king-ring) Miscellaneous Reactions 10. Failures 11. indirect Associations (repentance-black via mourning) 12. Meaningless Reactions 13. Simple Repetition of the stimulus word (lake-lake) 14. Perseveration (village-people, cold-person) 15. Egocentric Reactions 17 18 a. Direct ideas of reference (love-I) b. Subjective value judgments (marry-pleasant) In short, internal associations are based on similarity of content between stimulus and reaction, and external associations are based on common usage of stimulus and reaction word together.· Generally, this type of classification is not particularly helpful unless one type of reaction predominates. A subject who produces more than fifty per cent internal reactions can be classified as an evaluating type. This type is generally uneducated. The superficial type is identified by more than fifty per cent external or shallow reactions, and is characteristic of educated persons who, rather than view the stimulus word in terms of its meaning, respond linguistically.
Purpose:
To find the subjects emotional attachment to the words using the word association analysis.
Equipment/Material Used
i) Jungs’ Analysis reference
ii) Answer Sheet for Kent Rosanoff Word list
iii) Pen/pencil/paper, eraser
iv) Watch
Introduction to the subject:
Name: XXX XXX
Age: 26
Religion: Hindu
Gender: Male
Marital status: Married
Occupation: AI Engineer
Education : Bachelors
Date of the Test: January 27, 2020, 11:00 AM
Place: Jhamsikhel
Test Administration:
Procedure:
Subject was instructed before taking the test as per manual. The subject was informed about the test, its relevance and the answer sheet was handed to him. The Subject’s consent was requested and assured that the data obtained will remain confidential and was requested to proceed with the test and ask for help if needed.
Testing:
The test was conducted in the office room. After the subject was instructed the test was conducted with all the materials. The subject was requested to ask for any assistance or confusion he has while performing the test. The subject was then asked for the introspective response of taking the test.
Introspection:
After the testing was completed the subject was asked to share his experience. He replied, “I enjoyed giving the test but in the middle I was feeling like I was drawing some pattern on the answer sheet though I assure you that I have provided my honest response. For the first three questions I went vertically instead of horizontally so one of my responses does not match and I have corrected that hope you will consider that. Overall the experience was a fun one though the number of questions were quite more than I expected”.
Release:
After the subject provided the introspection report,the subject was released with thanks and assuring him that he will receive his scoring on our next meeting.
Result and Analysis/Interpretation
Obtained Score:
| S.N. | DIMENSIONS | Obtained Score |
| 1. | Emotional | 16 |
| 2. | Matter of fact | 46 |
| 3 | Verbal | 38 |
Table: Obtained Score Word Association
Word association tests can be examined from several aspects, including response content, structure, and complex indication. Using Carl Jung’s analysis the subjects score was 16 for emotional attachment, 46 for matter of fact and 38 for Verbal. The responses were more related to the meaning of the word and linguist so the subject seems to be more of superficial type and literate.
Impression:
The subject seems to be attached to some words and had similar kinds of responses for these words.
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