Word Association
Encyclopedia
Word Association is a common word game
involving an exchange
of words that are associated together. The game is based on the noun phrase word association, meaning "stimulation of an associative pattern by a word" or "the connection and production of other words in response to a given word, done spontaneously as a game, creative technique, or in a psychiatric evaluation."
Usually, players write down the next word by merely using the first word that comes to their mind after they hear the previous one. Sometimes however they may put in more thought to find a more creative
connection between the words. Exchanges are often fast and sometimes unpredictable (though logic
al patterns can usually be found without difficulty). Sometimes, a lot of the game's fun can arise from the seemingly strange or amusing associations that people make between words. It is also found amusing what you can get from an original word, and how they contrast distinctly, for example, from the word "tea" you could get the word "murder".
The game can be played actively or passively, sometimes taking many weeks to complete, and can in fact be played with any number of players, even one.
Example:
Soda
,
Sprite
,
Fairy
,
Tinkerbell
,
Peter Pan
,
Pans, Skillet,
Kitchens,
Refrigerator
,
Drinks,
Soda
A game based on the Word Association game which is sometimes popular for informal social gatherings is Bobsledding.
mind (as it shows what things they associate together), however some are skeptical of how effective such a technique could be in psychology. However, more often than not, most of the fun of the game comes from observing the erratic links between words, where the amusement comes from wondering how someone else's mind managed to make such an association.
Often, the game's goal is to compare the first and final word, to see if they relate, or to see how different they are, or also to see how many words are repeated. Likewise, players often review the list of words to see the pathways of associations that go from beginning to end.
Certain popular psychologists like Derren Brown
have shown an ability to predict people's word associations, and some suggest that humans actually find it very difficult to disassociate words such that they become more predictable when told to do so. For instance, the aforementioned Derren Brown once predicted two words in a sequence of "disassociated" words made by a professional psychologist (after failing twice). Notably, the man disassociated the word "school" with "tie", where the actual association is quite clear.
Word association has been used by market research
ers to ensure the proper message is conveyed by names or adjectives used in promoting a company's products. For example, James Vicary
, working in the 1950s, tested the word 'lagered' for a brewing company. While about a third of his subjects associated the word with beer, another third associated it with tiredness, dizzyness and so forth. As a result of the study, Vicary's client decided not to use the word.
In the early years of psychology, many doctors noted that patients exhibited behavior that they were not in control of. Some part of the personality seemed to have an influence on that person's behavior that was not in his/her conscious control. This part was, by function, unconscious, and became so named the Unconscious. Carl Jung
theorized that people connect ideas, feelings, experiences and information by way of associations.....that ideas and experiences are linked, or grouped, in the unconscious in such a manner as to exert influence over the individual’s behavior. These groupings he named Complexes.
The quest for the early analysts was how to access and free the contents of the unconscious. Early methods of this treatment included hypnosis, dream analysis, and word association. Word association research started as a psychological science with Darwin's cousin, Sir Francis Galton
, who thought that there might be a link between a person's I.Q. (intelligence quotient) and word associations. A typical association is such: if I say "cat", you might say "dog". This indicates that you associate dog with cat, a common association. A common "association test" would be list of trigger words that the person being tested would respond to as quickly as possible. Often these responses were timed, and it became obvious that certain words could cause a considerable delay in the individual's response. Sir Francis was unable to find a direct link between intelligence and word association, however Jung became curious about the time delay that occurred in responding to certain words. Jung theorized that the delay between stimulus and response indicated some sort of block in self expression. One type of block might be that too many possible answers rush to the surface and create a sort-of expression log-jam, and that one is unable to answer until one sorts out all the possible answers. Another possibility is that the individual feels “uncomfortable” with the response, or that the response is “inappropriate”, thus they resist expressing the answer. This resistance to answer is part of the phenomena that Freud described as repression.
Word game
Word games and puzzles are spoken or board games often designed to test ability with language or to explore its properties.Word games are generally engaged as a source of entertainment, but have been found to serve an educational purpose as well...
involving an exchange
Trade
Trade is the transfer of ownership of goods and services from one person or entity to another. Trade is sometimes loosely called commerce or financial transaction or barter. A network that allows trade is called a market. The original form of trade was barter, the direct exchange of goods and...
of words that are associated together. The game is based on the noun phrase word association, meaning "stimulation of an associative pattern by a word" or "the connection and production of other words in response to a given word, done spontaneously as a game, creative technique, or in a psychiatric evaluation."
How to play
Once an original word has been chosen, usually randomly or arbitrarily, a player will find a word that they associate with it and make it known to all the players, usually by saying it aloud or writing it down as the next item on a list of words so far used. The next player must then do the same with this previous word. This continues in turns for any length of time, but often word limits are set, so that the game is agreed to end after, for instance, 400 words.Usually, players write down the next word by merely using the first word that comes to their mind after they hear the previous one. Sometimes however they may put in more thought to find a more creative
Creativity
Creativity refers to the phenomenon whereby a person creates something new that has some kind of value. What counts as "new" may be in reference to the individual creator, or to the society or domain within which the novelty occurs...
connection between the words. Exchanges are often fast and sometimes unpredictable (though logic
Logic
In philosophy, Logic is the formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning. Logic is used in most intellectual activities, but is studied primarily in the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, semantics, and computer science...
al patterns can usually be found without difficulty). Sometimes, a lot of the game's fun can arise from the seemingly strange or amusing associations that people make between words. It is also found amusing what you can get from an original word, and how they contrast distinctly, for example, from the word "tea" you could get the word "murder".
The game can be played actively or passively, sometimes taking many weeks to complete, and can in fact be played with any number of players, even one.
Example:
Soda
Soft drink
A soft drink is a non-alcoholic beverage that typically contains water , a sweetener, and a flavoring agent...
,
Sprite
Sprite
sprite or SPRITE may refer to:* any meaning of "spirit"** a ghost, the soul or spirit of a deceased person or animal that can appear, in visible form or other manifestation, to the living...
,
Fairy
Fairy
A fairy is a type of mythical being or legendary creature, a form of spirit, often described as metaphysical, supernatural or preternatural.Fairies resemble various beings of other mythologies, though even folklore that uses the term...
,
Tinkerbell
Tinkerbell
Tinker Bell , is a fictional character from J. M. Barrie's 1904 play Peter Pan and its 1911 novelization Peter and Wendy. She has appeared in multiple film and television adaptations of the Peter Pan stories, in particular the 1953 animated Walt Disney picture Peter Pan...
,
Peter Pan
Peter Pan
Peter Pan is a character created by Scottish novelist and playwright J. M. Barrie . A mischievous boy who can fly and magically refuses to grow up, Peter Pan spends his never-ending childhood adventuring on the small island of Neverland as the leader of his gang the Lost Boys, interacting with...
,
Pans, Skillet,
Kitchens,
Refrigerator
Refrigerator
A refrigerator is a common household appliance that consists of a thermally insulated compartment and a heat pump that transfers heat from the inside of the fridge to its external environment so that the inside of the fridge is cooled to a temperature below the ambient temperature of the room...
,
Drinks,
Soda
Variants
In some games, extra limitations are added, for instance:- The associations between words must be strictly obvious, rather than the usual "first word that comes to mind", which can often require explaining to see how it is connected with the previous word.
- Word Disassociation Invented by Mulchie (sometimes called Dissociation) is sometimes played. In this game, the aim is to say a word that is as unrelated as possible to the previous one. In such games, however, it is often found that creativityCreativityCreativity refers to the phenomenon whereby a person creates something new that has some kind of value. What counts as "new" may be in reference to the individual creator, or to the society or domain within which the novelty occurs...
is lowered and the words stray towards having obvious associations again. There is a song about Word Disassociation by Neil CicieregaNeil CicieregaNeil Stephen Cicierega , is an American comedian, filmmaker and musician. He is the creator of a genre of Flash animation known as "Animutation". He has also released several albums as a musician under the stage name "Lemon Demon"....
(Lemon Demon) on his Damn Skippy album. This game is sometimes known as "Word for Word". - Sometimes, repeated words are forbidden or otherwise noted on a separate list for interest.
- A variant with an arbitrary name (sometimes called Ultra Word Association) involves associating words in a gridGrid (spatial index)In the context of a spatial index, a grid is a regular tessellation of a manifold or 2-D surface that divides it into a series of contiguous cells, which can then be assigned unique identifiers and used for spatial indexing purposes...
, where the first word is placed in the top-left, and where each word must be placed adjacent to another one and must associate with all those words adjacent to it.
A game based on the Word Association game which is sometimes popular for informal social gatherings is Bobsledding.
Example
Here is an example of how a Word Association game might run:Dog,
Cat,
Fur,
Coat,
Enshroud,
Night,
Eye,
Heart,
Love,
Hate,
Dark
Psychology
It is believed by some that this game can reveal something of a person's subconsciousSubconscious
The term subconscious is used in many different contexts and has no single or precise definition. This greatly limits its significance as a definition-bearing concept, and in consequence the word tends to be avoided in academic and scientific settings....
mind (as it shows what things they associate together), however some are skeptical of how effective such a technique could be in psychology. However, more often than not, most of the fun of the game comes from observing the erratic links between words, where the amusement comes from wondering how someone else's mind managed to make such an association.
Often, the game's goal is to compare the first and final word, to see if they relate, or to see how different they are, or also to see how many words are repeated. Likewise, players often review the list of words to see the pathways of associations that go from beginning to end.
Certain popular psychologists like Derren Brown
Derren Brown
Derren Victor Brown is a British illusionist, mentalist, painter, writer and sceptic. He is known for his appearances in television specials, stage productions and British television series such as Trick of the Mind and Trick or Treat...
have shown an ability to predict people's word associations, and some suggest that humans actually find it very difficult to disassociate words such that they become more predictable when told to do so. For instance, the aforementioned Derren Brown once predicted two words in a sequence of "disassociated" words made by a professional psychologist (after failing twice). Notably, the man disassociated the word "school" with "tie", where the actual association is quite clear.
Word association has been used by market research
Market research
Market research is any organized effort to gather information about markets or customers. It is a very important component of business strategy...
ers to ensure the proper message is conveyed by names or adjectives used in promoting a company's products. For example, James Vicary
James Vicary
James McDonald Vicary was a market researcher best known for pioneering the notion of subliminal advertising in 1957.-Biography:...
, working in the 1950s, tested the word 'lagered' for a brewing company. While about a third of his subjects associated the word with beer, another third associated it with tiredness, dizzyness and so forth. As a result of the study, Vicary's client decided not to use the word.
In the early years of psychology, many doctors noted that patients exhibited behavior that they were not in control of. Some part of the personality seemed to have an influence on that person's behavior that was not in his/her conscious control. This part was, by function, unconscious, and became so named the Unconscious. Carl Jung
Carl Jung
Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and the founder of Analytical Psychology. Jung is considered the first modern psychiatrist to view the human psyche as "by nature religious" and make it the focus of exploration. Jung is one of the best known researchers in the field of dream analysis and...
theorized that people connect ideas, feelings, experiences and information by way of associations.....that ideas and experiences are linked, or grouped, in the unconscious in such a manner as to exert influence over the individual’s behavior. These groupings he named Complexes.
The quest for the early analysts was how to access and free the contents of the unconscious. Early methods of this treatment included hypnosis, dream analysis, and word association. Word association research started as a psychological science with Darwin's cousin, Sir Francis Galton
Francis Galton
Sir Francis Galton /ˈfrɑːnsɪs ˈgɔːltn̩/ FRS , cousin of Douglas Strutt Galton, half-cousin of Charles Darwin, was an English Victorian polymath: anthropologist, eugenicist, tropical explorer, geographer, inventor, meteorologist, proto-geneticist, psychometrician, and statistician...
, who thought that there might be a link between a person's I.Q. (intelligence quotient) and word associations. A typical association is such: if I say "cat", you might say "dog". This indicates that you associate dog with cat, a common association. A common "association test" would be list of trigger words that the person being tested would respond to as quickly as possible. Often these responses were timed, and it became obvious that certain words could cause a considerable delay in the individual's response. Sir Francis was unable to find a direct link between intelligence and word association, however Jung became curious about the time delay that occurred in responding to certain words. Jung theorized that the delay between stimulus and response indicated some sort of block in self expression. One type of block might be that too many possible answers rush to the surface and create a sort-of expression log-jam, and that one is unable to answer until one sorts out all the possible answers. Another possibility is that the individual feels “uncomfortable” with the response, or that the response is “inappropriate”, thus they resist expressing the answer. This resistance to answer is part of the phenomena that Freud described as repression.