PSYCHOLOGY MASTER'S THESIS ABSTRACT

Hyun-Jeong Kim
MA-Research
August 1998

Comparisons of Associative Meaning of Emotion Concepts Between English and Korean

    The purpose of the study was to compare the free word associations of United States and Korean students to the concepts of anger, envy, fear, romantic jealousy, and sadness.  In addition, associations to anger, fear, and sadness were compared to those to romantic jealousy because some scholars have suggested that these emotions are an integral component of the experience of romantic jealousy.  In Experiment 1, native English and Korean speakers free-associated in writing to one emotion concept.  In Experiment 2, the associations were categorized by judges according to emic semantic meaning.  Cross-cultural differences and similarities were found in the associations to the five concepts.  Although anger, fear, and sadness are frequently reported to be experienced in jealousy predicaments, the associations to the three concepts differed considerably from the associations to jealousy in both nations.

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