Two Measures of Free Association Response and Their Relations to Scores on Selected Personality and Verbal Ability Tests

Abstract

The first 50 stimuli from the K-R list, two personality tests (the MCI and the GZTS), and 26 verbal ability paper-and-pencil tests were given to a large number of senior high school students. Two response categories for the K-R, opposites and non-opposite primaries, and the personality tests had low correlations, most of which did not differ significantly from zero. This finding is consistent with that of previous investigators. The correlations between the K-R response classes and the 26 verbal tests, however, yielded different results. The non-opposite primaries tended to exhibit low positive (significant) correlations with the verbal tests, whereas the opposite scores showed essentially zero correlations with these same tests. These findings were interpreted as further supporting the contention that commonality scores do not represent a unitary verbal habit.

The Relationship of Word‐association Commonality Response Set to Cognitive and Personality Variables

“…Intelligence, in the present sample, did not relate significantly to Commonality. Previous work with high-school students found a positive relationship of intelligence to the number of non-opposite primaries (Kjeldergaard & Carroll, 1963). In their study correlations between OES and verbal ability measures were all virtually zero, whereas Co(0ES) scores correlated significantly in 22 out of the 26 cases.…”

“…Block (1 960). Kjeldergaard & Carroll (1963) found a lack of any relationship between personality measures and their Commonality measures. From 72 correlations between K-R WAT scores and personality measures reported, only six were significant a t P < 0.05 and all of these were for female subjects.…”

Individual differences in associating to neutral and emotional words.

“…Despite the promise of pioneering work contrasting normal and clinical groups (Kent & Rosanoff, 1910), attempts to relate WA indexes to personality traits in normal groups have generally failed. There is evidence for the reliability of interindividual differences in WA (Jenkins, 1960), but they do not appear to be attributable to standard personality traits (Block, 1960;Kjeldergaard & Carroll, 1963). In contrast, such Sword characteristics as frequency of use (Hall & Ugelow, 1957), rated emotionality (Levinger & Clark, 1961), and rated concreteness (Smith & Harleston, 1966), are readily found to correlate with WA measures.…”