Current Problems of Psychiatry

Lexical taxonomy of personal associations with Polish politicians

ORYGINAL PAPERS

Curr Probl Psychiatry 2010, 11, 1, 53-59

Oleg Gorbaniuk, Karolina Markiewicz, Marek Bąkowicz, Agnieszka Ratajewska

Katedra Psychologii Eksperymentalnej Instytut Psychologii Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II

Abstract

According to lexical hypothesis, all meaningful individual differences are stored in language. Analyzing the struc-ture of language, we can discover features that are responsible for the existence of individual differences. In order to establish visible features of personality among Polish politicians, a method of free associations has been used. This method is substantially free of theoretical foundations and it can serve as a tool to explore the structure of language that is used to describe politicians. For this reason, 100 interviews have been conducted with people between 19 and 64 years old. Each person had to produce as much associations as they could. The associations concerned 25 the most well-known and recognizable politicians in Polish politics. All 11776 associations that were gathered from this survey, have been classified by 9 judges, based on taxonomy by Angleitner, Ostendorf and John [1]. The article presents the results of classification and the means to use it in future research on dimension of politicians’ personality.

Keywords

image, personal interview, free associations, lexical approach, lexical taxonomy, politicians