Lorch, Marjorie (2025) Word association and communality of thought. History of Psychology , ISSN 1093-4510.
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Abstract
The word association task has been a standard form of assessment and research tool for over a century used for investigating how concepts are associated with each other and for how they are linked to words. In the 1950s, researchers at Loyola University, Chicago changed the instructions of the original free word association test in a fundamental way by asking participants to provide the word that they thought most other people would say. This novel task manipulation was intended to assess the ability to deliberately reflect on intrapersonal knowledge. It was grounded in the ideas of Henry Stack Sullivan (1892-1949) and David Rapaport (1911-1960) about the contribution of interpersonal relations to mental development and mental health. Sullivan’s concept of ‘communality of thought’ was used to interpret the mental process being measured. In the mid-20th century, the psychologist Vincent V. Herr, S.J. (1905–1971) led a research project exploring the relation between linguistic, cognitive, and emotional resources by testing people having various age, socio-cultural, educational, and personality characteristics. The aim was to assess peoples’ degree of empathy to “the unknown other”. This approach represented an interesting innovation in psychological assessment. It gained little traction in the field due to a variety of contextual circumstances. The development of this assessment and the theorizing around it is revisited here to consider its significance as a means of addressing research questions in psychology, psychiatry, and linguistics on issues of interest regarding a normative notion of shared social linguistic knowledge.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Keyword(s) / Subject(s): | Word Association, Empathy, Reflexivity, 20th century Psychology, Assessment |
| School: | Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication |
| Depositing User: | Administrator |
| Date Deposited: | 01 Jul 2025 13:26 |
| Last Modified: | 01 Sep 2025 18:35 |
| URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/54978 |
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