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Съпоставително езикознание/Сопоставительное языкознание/Contrastive Linguistics, ХLIV, 2019, № 4 57
COMPARATIVE PSYCHOSEMANTIC DISTANCES
BETWEEN THE TERM I AND OTHER TERMS RELATED
TO RESPONSIBILITY — AN EXPLORATORY STUDY
Ilina Marinova
New Bulgarian University
К категориальной структуре понятия „ответственность“ применяется психосеман-
тический анализ. Рассматриваются его связи с воспринимаемой собственной лич-
ностью, а также сила этих связей. 30 англоязычных понятий, связанных с понятием
„ответственность“, выведены из словарей и энциклопедий и исследованы методом
свободной классификации с участием 57 человек – носителей разных языков. Люди
связывают понятие „ответственность“ в относительно небольшой степени со своей
личностью – больше с узким социальным кругом и меньше – с широким социальным
кругом; больше с понятиями с внутренним локусом ответственности (например, с
синтаксическими конструкциями – „воля“) и меньше – с понятиями с внешним локу-
сом ответственности (например, „обязанность“); больше с позитивными предпосыл-
ками и последствиями принятия ответственности, чем с негативными. Пол и родной
язык оказывают некоторое влияние на категориальную структуру ответственности.
The categorical structure of the term “responsibility” and its relations with the concept of
self were revealed in a study conducted with 57 English-speaking participants with different
native languages. 30 words were extracted from dictionaries and encyclopedias and the
psychosemantic distances between them were measured by means of the free classifi cation
method. It seems that people perceive responsibility as relatively distant from their Self-
concept. They relate it more to the narrow social sphere, and less to the wider social sphere,
more to terms with a locus of responsibility closer to personality (e.g. “will”), and less –
to terms with a locus of responsibility farther from personality (e.g. “obligation”), more
with positive and neutral prerequisites and consequences of responsibility, and less with its
negative prerequisites and consequences. Sex and native language infl uence the categorical
structure of responsibility to some extent.
Keywords: responsibility, Self-concept, psychosemantics, pronouns, English
Introduction
The subject of this study is the intuitive perception of personal responsibility
and its different aspects (legal, moral, social, etc.). We are interested in the
individual perception of responsibility in personal, interpersonal and collective
relations. Collective responsibility is out of our scope.
58
Pronouns I and We, terms I and We, and their relation with the Self-
concept
Discourse is a concrete expression of the relationship between culture and
language (Sherzer, 1987). Grammatical categories of language are the most
important carriers of the cultural and social categories (Hill & Mannheim,
1992).
The unique concept of person in a particular culture is represented by
the specifi c use of personal pronouns. Deixes acquire their meanings through
culture-specifi c, situational practices (Hanks, 1990). Specifi c ways of deixes’
use in the everyday discourse could draw attention to relevant, specifi c aspects
of the interpersonal relations.
Deixes index elements of speech in particular situations (e.g. event,
participants, environment). They describe the relationship between speaker
and context, their attitude to the social context of speech (Langacker, 1987:
128–132). Terms’ relationship is analogous to that in perception. The deixis
is focused on the immediate goal of the expression just like the focus of the
visual perception is fi xed on the object. When something appears “on the
stage”, in the focus of perception, it becomes the most salient element of
the expression. E.g. if an expression includes a fi rst person singular pronoun
like “I am reading this page”, the speaker becomes the most salient element
(Langacker, 1991: 330–355).
Sentences which use a fi rst person singular pronoun as a subject draw
the attention to the speaker. Dropping of pronouns alternatively decreases
speaker’s saliency. By dropping or not dropping pronouns the speaker is able
to manipulate the saliency of their person and the other participants in the
discourse (Kashima & Kashima, 1998).
Priming with singular personal pronouns (I, my, me, mine) induces
temporarily individualistic attitude, while that with plural personal pronouns
(we, our, us, ours) – collectivistic attitude (Brewer & Gardner, 1996; Gardner
et al., 1999 as cited in Na & Choi, 2009). The attitude is accompanied by
values, behaviour and even thinking style change (Oyserman & Lee, 2008).
The pronoun priming technique works in English (Gardner et al., 1999 as cited
in Na & Choi, 2009), German (Kühnen et al., 2001), Dutch (van Baaren at al.,
2003) and Korean (Cha, 2006, as cited in Na & Choi, 2009).
The use of possessive personal pronouns is infl uenced by both permanent,
and induced by priming, individualistic or collectivistic orientations. E.g., people
with collectivistic orientation have stronger preference to use plural possessive
pronouns than those with individualistic orientation. (Na & Choi, 2009).
People sometimes include other related persons when describing
themselves (e.g. using We), sometimes they exclude them (e.g. using I and He
or She) (Fitzsimons & Kay, 2004, as cited in Semin, 2007). Perhaps people
59
systematically mark distance or proximity in interpersonal relations by means
of personal pronouns (Semin, 2007).
We assumed that the words I and We taken out of grammatical context draw
the focus of attention to different aspects of the Self-concept. I presumably
activates the personal Self-concept, and We – the social (interpersonal or
collective) Self-concept.
Foreign language and Self-concept
A qualitative study from 2009 analysed examples of the intercultural
communication of students attending a programme in English in Thailand. The
study revealed that cultural frames of reference are perceived and used as a mix
of global, national, local and individual perspectives. Cultural forms, practices
and frames of reference perceived through the English language as lingua
franca are not a priori fi xed categories but adaptive and emerging resources.
They are negotiated and dependent on the context (Baker, 2009).
People cannot completely ignore their native cultural context in the
process of learning a second language. They interpret the linguistic meanings
in the new language through the knowledge constructed by their native
society (Hinkel, 1999; Peirce, 1995; Tseng, 2002 as cited in Lin, 2009). The
process of identifi cation while learning a new language is troubled by the
infl uence of the two cultural systems whose values could be very different
(Norton, 1997).
The participants in an experiment from 1998 (who received at least fi ve years
of education in English as a foreign language at high school) had to name pictures
in their native language (Dutch) and in the foreign language (English). The Dutch
name was always activated in the initial phase of the process of lexical access to
the foreign language equivalent. The participants could not avoid the infl uence of
their fi rst language while producing words in the foreign language (Hermans et
al., 1998). An experiment from 2009 showed that limited working time increases
the infl uence of the native language (Ganushchak & Schiller, 2009).
On the basis of the reviewed literature, we assumed that the knowledge
of the native language and culture would mediate the interpretation of the
linguistic information in people working on a linguistic task in English as a
foreign language.
Responsibility in philosophy
Williams (2006) discusses four areas of individual moral responsibility:
“(1) Responsible agency, whereby a person is regarded as a normal moral
agent; (2) Retrospective responsibility, when a person is judged for her actions,
60
for instance, in being blamed or punished; (3) Prospective responsibility, for
instance, the responsibilities attaching to a particular role; and (4) Responsibility
as a virtue, when we praise a person as being responsible.”
The general meaning of the concept “responsibility” is defi ned by Lenk
(2006) as “a concept expressed by a relational system of attribution in terms of
an expectation of an action or its result”.
The attribution of responsibility is multidimensional and can be assigned
in a descriptive manner. It can also be distinguished between responsibilities
with regard to some types and degrees of sanctions (e.g. formal, informal), or
between different degrees of obligation (e.g. must, ought, can) (Lenk, 2006).
We explored the areas of responsibility concerning the individual and
their perception of being a person in the context of culture and society, with
three philosophical directions of meaning: 1) Responsibility in its relational
meaning, covering the spectrum from two persons to the whole humanity; 2)
Responsibility with reference to the degree of obligation; 3) Responsibility
concerning the prerequisites and consequences of being responsible (retro-
spective/prospective responsibility).
Responsibility in psychology
In psychology, responsibility has been studied in the context of the
attribution theories (Heider, 1958; Weiner, 1995; Robbennolt, 2000 as cited
in Sheldon et al., 2018, etc.). The theory of excuses (Schlenker, 1997) and
the theory of blame (Alicke, 2000) are of pragmatic value for legal purposes.
The wide frame of responsibility research includes studies on moral behaviour
(e.g. Nahmias, Morris, Nadelhoffer, & Turner, 2005), working behaviour
(Nordbye & Teigen, 2014), behavioural medicine (e.g. Brownell et al., 2010)
and ecological behaviour (e.g. Hines et al., 1987).
Attribution theories
Sedikides & Strube (1997) observed that people tend to exaggerate their
personal qualities, to perceive their Self-concept as more positive than it is in
reality, and that people also tend to deny negative information about themselves.
Sedikides & Strube named this effect “self-serving bias”. The same effect was
at work e.g. when students explained their exam results (Bernstein et al., 1979),
or football coaches – the results of their teams. In the cases of group failure
people attributed more responsibility to the others, in the cases of success – to
themselves (Ross & Sicoly, 1979).
With regard to the self-serving bias effect people could be expected to
perceive the terms with positive and neutral connotation as closer to their
personality and those with negative connotation – as farther, in consistency
with the self-serving bias.
61
Responsibility in positive psychology
The subjects of positive psychology are happiness and the well-being of
people (Srinivasan, 2015). “Personal responsibility” is a key term in positive
psychology and yet few studies are available in the fi eld (Linleya & Maltbyb,
2009).
According to positive psychology, personal responsibility has a wider
scope than moral responsibility. Even if a particular task is of no moral value,
its completion could be of value to an individual. Personal responsibility
concerns the individual’s choice of duties and planned projects. All other kinds
of responsibility: social, professional, legal, or other, express the meaning
of duties of external origin to the individual. And yet an externally assigned
responsibility can become personal. Some individuals make a personal choice
to fulfi l their professional, social and other duties to a greater extent compared
to others (Sheldon et al., 2018).
Self-Determination Theory connects the self-regulation of behaviour
to a continuum of perceived autonomy (Ryan & Deci, 2004). Perceptual
heteronomy is at the one end of this continuum – the behaviour is perceived
as externally regulated and the person undertakes it to receive an award or
to avoid a punishment. Internal motivation (autonomy) is at the other end:
behaviour is perceived as a personal choice in the spirit of proactivity, and
not as a function of anxiety or defence (Ryan et al., 2012). The experience of
free will on the autonomous end of this continuum is not merely an illusion.
It is a substantial motivational factor and has important consequences for the
individual. The relevant research showed that the experience of “authorship”
(e.g. Wegner, 2008) or “autonomy” (e.g. Ryan & Deci, 2000) predicted
effective task performance, well-being and other positive results (Ryan
et al., 2012).
The three experiments of a cross-cultural study from 2018 confi rmed that
psychological freedom (autonomy) and personal responsibility are interrelated.
(Sheldon et al., 2018).
We expected to fi nd a new confi rmation of this tendency.
We expected to discover three dimensions related to the construct of
personal responsibility exploring the chosen philosophical directions and
psychological theories.
1) Social dimension: terms meaning smaller social groups were expected
to be closer to the perceived personality than the terms meaning larger groups;
2) Perceived autonomy/heteronomy: terms with internal locus of
responsibility were expected to be perceived as closer to the personality than
those with external locus of responsibility;
3) Emotional connotation: terms with positive or neutral connotation were
expected to be perceived as closer to personality than those with negative
connotation.
62
Gender and moral
The moral judgements theory of Kohlberg (1964) assumed that moral
is universal and identical for women and men. Other researchers proposed a
possible bias.
Traditionally, women are more involved in care for the family and children.
Gilligan proposed two models of moral judgements: the ethics of care (women),
and the ethics of justice (men) (Gilligan, 1977). It is believed that men usually
approach moral dilemmas in a rational way, with a justice-based orientation
that respects rules and duties, whereas women approach them with a care-
based orientation that emphasises empathy and care for others (Yang et al.,
2014). Gilligan argued that women tolerate immoral behaviour less than men.
Walker’s (1984) meta-analysis of more than 100 studies found no
signifi cant gender differences in moral thinking as a whole. Gilligan’s claims
were confi rmed with insignifi cant effect size (You et al., 2011).
We expected that the psychosemantic structure of the term “responsibility”
of women and men has no differences.
Method
The goals of this study were to reveal the intuitive categorical structure of
the term “responsibility”, the relative positioning of the Self-concept towards
three presumable dimensions: social distance, autonomy/heteronomy, and
emotional connotation, and to check the effects of sex and native language on
the categorical structure of responsibility.
We hypothesised that: 1) Psychosemantic similarity between the
terms I and We and the terms meaning “responsibility” is relatively small;
2) Psychosemantic distances between the term I and terms meaning social
groups of rising sizes (e.g. Family, Society) grow with the size of social groups;
3) The terms with internal locus of responsibility (e.g. Interest, Will) are closer
to the terms I and We than those with external locus of responsibility (e.g.
Compulsion, Obligation); 4) Terms meaning prerequisites/consequences of
responsibility with negative connotation (e.g. Weakness, Guilt) are farther from
the terms I and We than those with neutral or positive connotation (e.g. Ability,
Award); 5) The terms Family, Child, and Care are as close to the terms I and
We in women as in men; 6) The term I is farther from the term We in native
English speakers compared to non-native speakers, in people originating from
individualistic cultures compared to those from collectivistic cultures, and in
people whose native languages allow dropping personal pronouns from the
sentence compared to those whose native languages do not allow it1; 7) The
1 From this point onward the languages whose rules do not allow dropping personal pronouns
from the sentence will be abbreviated as "NPD languages" and those whose rules allow dropping
personal pronouns will be abbreviated as "PD languages".
63
term I is closer to the terms with an internal locus of responsibility and farther
from those with an external locus of responsibility in native English speakers
compared to non-native speakers, in people originating from individualistic
cultures compared to those from collectivistic cultures, and in people with
NPD native languages compared to those with PD native languages.
The free classifi cation method is classifi cation of terms by similarity of
their meanings. The number of classes into which two words are put together
by a group of study participants is used for quantitative assessment of the
similarity in meaning (Gerganov, 1984). This method was used to reveal the
structure of the term Responsibility.
We assumed that if the words I and We were provided in a list together
with other words related to responsibility (legal, moral, social, or other) the
participants would reconstruct the psychosemantic connections between
their Self-concept (represented by the words I and We) and the aspects of
responsibility which they perceived as related to it.
The interconnected terms can be regarded as points in a multidimensional
semantic space. We measured the psychosemantic distances between the terms
related to responsibility and the terms I and We to operationalise the connections
between the different aspects of responsibility and the Self-concept.
The study was conducted in English.
Stimuli
We reviewed the defi nitions of the term “responsibility” in dictionaries and
encyclopediae and composed a text corpus including defi nitions, synonyms,
antonyms, related words, and parts of philosophical articles. The corpus
includes 1589 different words with meanings related to responsibility. By
means of content analysis we sorted these words into categories and counted
their frequencies.
The list was modifi ed in compliance with the following criteria:
a) optimal number of words. When the method of free classifi cation is
applied, the optimal number of words-stimuli is 40 or less so that the participants
are able to see and compare all of them simultaneously. The initial list of 1589
words was reduced to 30 words.
b) better comprehension. The more popular words were selected from the
available synonyms.
c) measuring the distance. We included the personal pronouns I and We in
the list of words to serve as the closest reference points to the personality of the
participant, the “zero” on the axis.
– The terms classifi ed together with I are perceived as closely related to the
participant’s personality.
– The terms classifi ed together with We are perceived as closely related
to the participant’s personality with the mediation of a group of people. The
64
participant prefers not to engage with this type of responsibility personally or
not to take the whole responsibility himself/herself.
– The terms in the groups which do not include I or We are relatively
distant from the perceived personality of the participant.
The pronouns which indicate relative distance and disconnection (You, He,
She, It, They) were not included in the list as unnecessary. In addition, if they
were included, the participants could group the pronouns together as such.
d) context. All words in the list have multiple meanings. To choose a
particular meaning the participants need to analyse the context. The distinction
between “what is said” and “what is implicated” divides semantics from
pragmatics. The neutrality of context is the most important condition to reveal
the semantic meaning of a term (Finkbeiner & Meibauer, 2012).
It seems that moral judgements are strongly related to causality and moral
characteristics are a part of the concept of causality (Knobe & Doris, 2010).
The deliberate causality of a free agent is critical for understanding of the
verbal syntax and the meaning (DeLancey, 1984; Levin & Rappaport, 1995;
Folli & Harley, 2005; Alexiadou et al., 2006). Therefore, explicit or implicit
information about causality, included in the stimuli could also violate the
neutrality of the context.
To create a context close to the neutral we reduced the intratextual,
infratextual and intertextual context:
– Causal connection is a part of the meaning of accomplishments like build
a house or bake a cake (Pustejovsky, 1995; Ramchand, 2008; Higginbotham,
2009). The syntactic-semantic interface is a basic representational mechanism
of causality in language (Copley et al., 2014). That is why phrases or sentences
were not included in the fi nal list, only individual words.
– Causality is represented most obviously by predicates like cause (Copley
et al., 2014). In their absence the connections between the terms are revealed
through the classifi cation decisions. The predicates were removed.
– The meanings of modal verbs like can and must and the meanings of
verbs like help and prevent – and generally all verbs (e.g. Croft, 1991) and
Gärdenfors (e.g. 2000) – are probably related to causality (Copley et al., 2014).
No verbs or verb forms were included. They were replaced by nouns with the
same implicit meanings. For example, must (be obliged), should (expressing
necessity) are represented by Compulsion.
– If the list included different parts of speech (nouns, adjectives, verbs,
pronouns etc.), some of the participants would probably classify them as such
or try to combine them into familiar expressions instead of grouping them by
meaning. All selected words were converted into nouns in their base form.
– Adjectives represent the attribution of the terms. In semantics they
express the properties of the terms (Kennedy, 2012). E.g. “social” means
“which belongs to society”. The properties personal (responsibility), social
65
(responsibility), etc. were converted into personal pronouns and nouns in
their base form (Personal – I, Social – Society). If I and Responsibility were
classifi ed into the same group this meant that the participant perceived the term
Responsibility as closely related to their personality (personal).
e) social dimension. The nouns Partner, Child, Friend, Stranger, Family,
Society, State, Life were included in the list to represent different sizes and
kinds of social groups. The participants could classify them as being closer
or farther from the term I (their personality). Some of these words are well
represented in the list, others – not.
f) heteronomy/autonomy dimension (locus of responsibility). The words
Chance, Compulsion, Liability, Obligation, Responsibility, Control, Care,
Choice, Interest, Will were included in the list. We presumed that the fi rst 5 of
them have an external locus of responsibility and the rest – an internal locus
of responsibility. All of them are well represented in the text corpus. Liability,
Responsibility, Care are synonyms.
g) prerequisites/consequences of responsibility. The words Award,
Punishment, Effort, Ability, Weakness, Attention, Ignorance, Ownership, Guilt,
Worry were included in the list. They are well represented in the corpus and
have meanings of prerequisites/consequences of responsibility with different
connotation. To assign connotation we used an online software of Stony Brook
University, USA (Feng et al., 2013).
The fi nal list of words-stimuli consisted of the following 30 personal
pronouns and nouns, all of them in base form (Table 1 below):
66
TABLE 1
Modifi ed word list
67
Participants
The participants were invited to take part in the study through the Facebook
group Silly Linguistics Community with around 40 000 members for the
period of data collection. The offi cial language of the group is English. The
participation was voluntary.
The number of valid participations was 57 of which:
– declared sex: man – 22 (38.6%), woman – 35 (61.4%);
– declared age: from 14 to 58 years, 29 years on average;
– place of participation: 24 countries and 52 different cities. Participants
by country: Algeria – 1, Australia – 1, Austria – 1, Brazil – 1, Bulgaria – 5,
Canada – 1, Denmark – 1, France – 2, Germany – 3, India – 2, Italy – 2,
Lebanon – 1, Malaysia – 1, Netherlands – 5, Poland – 1, Portugal – 3, Russia
– 1, Singapore – 1, South Africa – 3, Spain – 1, Sweden – 1, Turkey – 1, Great
Britain – 10, USA – 7;
– declared native language. 24 different cases (two participants are
bilingual from birth): English – 14, Russian – 5, Dutch – 4, Polish – 3, Spanish
– 3, French – 3, German – 3, Afrikaans –2, Italian – 2, Mandarin – 2, Hindi
– 2, Bulgarian – 2, Arabic – 1, Algerian Arabic – 1, Bangla and English–1,
Brazilian Portuguese – 1, European Portuguese – 1, Danish – 1, Gujarati – 1,
Telugu – 1, Persian – 1, Swedish – 1, Thai – 1, German and Serbian – 1;
– declared degree: High School – 9, Bachelor’s Degree – 24, Master’s
Degree – 20, Ph. D. – 3, Other – 1;
– declared level of English: lower than B2 – 1, B2 – 10, higher than B2
– 47. The participant who declared English language level lower than B2 is a
native English speaker from the USA and we decided to include his data.
Procedure
The free classifi cation experiment was conducted online by means of
the Optimal Workshop software (optimalworkshop.com). English level B2
(CEFRL) or higher was required for valid participation. The participants were
asked fi ve demographic questions. The next screen visualised cards with the 30
selected words written on them. The participants could drag and drop the cards
to form groups.
The instruction was as follows:
“Step 1. Choose a quiet and comfortable place. Take a quick look at the list
of items to the left. Read all the words. You need to understand their meanings.
Some of the words have many meanings. Use the fi rst meaning that comes to
your mind.
Step 2. We’d like you to sort the words into groups by the proximity of
their meanings. This is neither an English language, nor a logic exercise. There
is no right or wrong answer.
68
Step 3. Drag an item from the left into this area to create your fi rst group.
Click the title to rename your new group. If you don’t know what to write, just
label the groups with consecutive numbers.
Step 4. Add more items to the fi rst group by dropping them on top of it.
Make more groups by dropping them in unused spaces. You can create as many
groups as you like. You can create groups consisting of one word. You can
move cards from one group to another. Your goal is to group the words by the
proximity of their meanings. Work as fast as you can. When you’re done click
“Finished” at the top right. Have fun!”
The selected words-stimuli have multiple meanings. The participants
needed to use the semantic connections of a term with the other available terms
to choose a meaning for classifi cation. They needed to use their executive
attention to compare the meanings available in their long-term memory, choose
one for each term and classify the cards.
An element from the method of free associations, which was used to
research the semantic components of language units from the 70s of the 20th
century, was added to the method of free classifi cation. A requirement to “work
as fast as you can” was included in the instruction to condition the activation of
the strongest semantic connections in the memory of the participants.
The groups composed by the participants are predetermined by the initial
structure of the set of words (Frumkina, 1982 as cited in Gerganov, 1984). The
participants actively try to guess the initial classifi cation scheme (Gerganov,
1984). To minimise this effect: 1) the cards were arranged in random order,
different for every participant; 2) the participants need to reason in order to try
to restore the initial scheme. The requirement to “work as fast as they can” also
meant to restrict the reasoning.
Protocol was approved by the Ethics Committee of the New Bulgarian
University Department of Cognitive Science and Psychology.
The data was gathered in the period from 07.11.2018 to 14.11.2018.
The participants data includes country, region, city of participation, start
and fi nish time, time taken, browser, operational system, number of categories
created, number of cards sorted, categories named, comments, English language
level, degree level, native language, sex, age in years.
Subsamples
41 of 57 participants (71,9%) declared age between 20 and 29 years.
Only 9 out of 57 participants (15,8%) declared educational level lower than
Bachelor’s Degree. Sample division by age and educational level would not
lead to statistically representative results and was not explored. The general
sample was divided by: sex, native language, culture of origin (individualistic/
collectivistic) and the rule of pronoun drop in the native language.
69
The information about the cultural origin of the participants is indirect. We
assumed that native language and the culture of the country where it is offi cial
(including individualistic/collectivistic attitude) are active while working on
a linguistic task in the foreign language. We assigned the respective Index
of individualism values from the study of Hofstede et al. (2010, 57–59) to
the participants. The general sample was divided into two subsamples by the
index value – over 50 (61,4% of the participants) and below 50 (38,6% of the
participants).
The general sample was divided into two subsamples by the rule of pronoun
dropping of the native language. The rule (NPD/PD) for the participants’
languages was taken from the study of Kashima & Kashima (1998). 45,6%
of the participants declare PD native languages, 54,4% of them – NPD native
languages.
Results and discussion
The participants needed from 4.00 to 26.02 minutes, on average 10.78
minutes to complete the study tasks and answer the questions.
The number of categories they created vary from 2 to 16, on average 5,42.
General results, similarity matrix (see Table 2 below)
Participants connected intuitively almost all of the 30 chosen terms.
Largest similarity was measured between the terms Partner and Family
(93%). Over 50% similarity was observed in 39 out of 435 couples of words.
The average concurrence was 23%. 0% similarity was observed in only 4 cases:
Partner and Punishment, Family and Punishment, Child and Punishment,
Child and Ignorance.
The categorical structure of responsibility is individual. The contents of all
created groups of words are (more or less) different.
The synonyms of the term Responsibility are closely related.
– Responsibility. Strongest connections: Obligation (60%), Liability
(46%), Award (39%). Weakest connections: Ignorance (9%), Stranger (7%).
Strongest connections with the social group terms: Life (26%), Family (25%),
Child (23%), I (21%). Weakest – Society (12%), Stranger (7%).
– Liability. Strongest connections: Responsibility (46%), Obligation
(40%), Punishment and Guilt (37%). Weakest connections: Partner and Friend
(5%). The connections with the social terms are weak as a whole, the strongest
of them is with State (23%).
– Care. Strongest connections: Child (70%), Partner (65%), Family (63%).
Weakest connections: State, Ownership, Punishment (5%) and Ignorance (4%).
The fi rst hypothesis about psychosemantic similarity between the terms
I and We and the terms meaning “responsibility” being relatively small was
70
confi rmed. The similarity between I and the synonym of Responsibility, Care,
is 35%, followed by Responsibility (21%), and Liability (11%). The similarity
between We and Responsibility is 19%, We and Liability – 11%. The only
exception is the pair of We and Care whose result of 54% slightly surmounts
the middle of the scale (Figure 1 below).
TABLE 2
Similarity matrix, all terms (in %)
71
General results for I and We, similarity matrix
I or We are classifi ed together with any of the other words at least once.
The term I is most closely connected with the term We (61%) across the
social dimension, followed by Family (53%), Partner, Child and Friend (51%).
The weakest connections of I are with Stranger (33%), Life (30%), Society
(25%) and State (9%). The connections of We are similar but stronger, except
for that with State (7%).
The second hypothesis about psychosemantic distances between the term
I and terms meaning social groups of rising sizes growing with the size of
social groups is supported by the results from the fi rst part of Table 2 (social
distance). The connections of I with Society, State and Life are weaker than
those with Partner, Family, Child and Friend.
This hypothesis was checked using the multidimensional scaling method
(Table 3). Child, Partner, Family, Friend, Life are located on the same side of
the scale as I and We. Stranger, Society and State – on the other side.
The connections of I are relatively weaker across the heteronomy/
autonomy dimension compared to those across the social dimension. Its
strongest connections are with Care (35%), Will (26%), Responsibility, Chance
(21%), Interest (18%) and Choice (14%). The weakest connections of I are with
Control, Obligation, Liability (11%) and Compulsion (9%). The connections of
We are similar, but weaker, except for that with Care (54%).
The third hypothesis about terms with internal locus of responsibility being
closer to the terms I and We than those with external locus of responsibility is
partially supported (Table 2, Heteronomy/autonomy part). E.g. the connection
of I with Will (internal locus of responsibility) is approximately 3 times stronger
72
than that with Compulsion (external locus of responsibility). The connection of
I with Responsibility (the locus is diffi cult to determine) is stronger than that
with Obligation (external locus).
These results are diffi cult for interpretation as we lack the information
about the particular meanings used by the participants in the classifi cation
process. E.g. the term Chance can be interpreted as “possibility” (the locus
of responsibility is most likely internal) and as “accident” (in this case the
locus of responsibility is unambiguously external). The locus of responsibility
of the term Control shifts easily from internal to external and vice versa. This
ambiguity could be overcome in a future study by applying ratings-based
approach to responsibility localisation.
The third hypothesis was also checked using the multidimensional scaling
method (Tables 4 and 5). Chance, Interest, Will, Care and Choice are located on
the I and We side of the axis, Responsibility, Control, Obligation, Compulsion
and Liability — on the other side, in support of the hypothesis.
The connections of I with the prerequisites and consequences of
responsibility are weakest compared to those across the two previously described
dimensions. The strongest connections of I are with Ability, Ownership (19%)
and Attention (16%). The strongest connection of We is with Attention (21%).
The connections of We with the terms Punishment, Weakness, Ignorance, Guilt
are very weak (less than 10%).
73
The fourth hypothesis about the terms meaning prerequisites/consequences
of responsibility with negative connotation being farther from the terms I and We
than those with neutral or positive connotation is supported by the data in Table
2, part Prerequisites/consequences of responsibility. The strongest connections
of I are with Ability (19%), Ownership (19%) and Attention (16%) (positive
or neutral connotation), the weakest are with Punishment (5%), Weakness
(9%), Ignorance (4%), Guilt (12%), Worry (11%) (negative connotation). The
strongest connections of We are with Attention (21%), Effort (12%) and Award
(9%) (positive or neutral connotation), the weakest – with Ignorance, Guilt
(4%), Weakness and Punishment (2%) (negative connotation).
This hypothesis was also confi rmed using the multidimensional scaling
method (Tables 6 and 7). The terms with positive or neutral connotation –
Effort, Ability, Attention, Award and Ownership – are located on the I and We
side of the axis. The terms with negative connotation – Weakness, Ignorance,
Worry, Guilt and Punishment – on the other side.
We applied the multidimensional scaling method to the whole group of
30 terms to check if the emotional connotation exists as a general dimension
of responsibility. Table 8 ranks the terms by their scale values on the second
obtained dimension. The words with negative connotation are located at the
negative end of the scale. The words with positive connotation tend to group at
the other end. The words with neutral connotation are located loosely around
the centre of the scale (see also Figure 2).
74
75
This scale can be interpreted as a continuum of the locus of responsibility
as well. The term I is located closely to the zero point. The terms arranged
along the negative spectrum of the scale can be related to an external locus
of responsibility and those along the positive spectrum of the scale – with an
internal locus of responsibility. We could confi rm these tendencies with more
rigour by applying ratings-based approach to the locus of responsibility and
emotional connotation in a future study.
General results from similarity matrices, subsamples
The general sample was divided into 8 subsamples:
– by sex – 2 subsamples (men/women);
– by native language – 2 subsamples (English/other);
– by culture – 2 subsamples (individualistic/collectivistic);
– by the rule of pronoun dropping – 2 subsamples (NPD/PD language).
8 additional similarity matrices were created for the subsamples.
The strongest connections for all subsamples are Family-Partner, Friend-
Partner, Child-Partner, Family-Child and Family-Friend (from 81% to 100%
similarity).
General results for I, similarity matrices, subsamples
General tendencies for the subsamples are the same as for the general
sample.
The term I is closest to We for all subsamples except for the women’s
subsample. Family is the second closest to I, with the exception of the subsample
of collectivistic cultures. The largest distance across the social dimension is
between I and State, followed by Society.
The smallest distance across the autonomy dimension is between I and
Care, followed by I and Will. The farthest term from I is Compulsion.
Ability and Ownership are the closest to I from the group of the prerequisites/
consequences of responsibility, for all subsamples except for the one of
collectivistic cultures. The most important connections of I for collectivists
are those with Attention and Guilt. Punishment and Ignorance are the farthest
terms from I, for all subsamples.
General results for We, similarity matrices, subsamples
The terms Partner and Family are closest to We for all subsamples. Friend
takes the next position.
State is the most distant from We of the social terms, for all subsamples. It
is followed by Stranger and Life for native English speakers, and Society for
women.
The strongest connection for the autonomy group is between the terms We
and Care, for all subsamples. The weakest connection here is between We and
76
Compulsion, followed by Control (for all subsamples except for collectivists
and people with PD native languages).
The closest term to We for the prerequisites/consequences group is Attention,
for all subsamples. The farthest is Punishment (not for the participants from
collectivistic cultures), followed by Weakness (not for the participants from
individualistic cultures and those with NPD native languages).
The fi fth hypothesis about the terms Family, Child, and Care being as
close to the terms I and We in women as in men was confi rmed comparing the
results from the calculated similarity matrices for the subsamples.
Men: I – Child – 59%; I – Family – 59%; I – Care – 36%.
Women: I – Child – 46%; I – Family – 49%; I – Care – 34%.
T-test (method of Plohinskii):
– for I – Child t = 0,9753 (tcrit = 2,004 for p<0,05)
– for I – Family t = 0,7660 (tcrit = 2,004 for p<0,05)
– for I – Care t = 0,1564 (tcrit = 2,004 for p<0,05)
Men: We – Child – 73%; We – Family – 77%; We – Care – 55%.
Women: We – Child – 69%; We – Family – 71%; We – Care – 54%.
T-test (method of Plohinskii):
– for We – Child t = 0,3307 (tcrit = 2,004 for p<0,05)
– for We – Family t = 0,4876 (tcrit = 2,004 for p<0,05)
– for We – Care t = 0,0188 (tcrit = 2,004 for p<0,05)
The terms Family, Child and Care are a bit closer in percentages to I and
We for the men’s subsample than for the women’s one. The differences are not
statistically signifi cant.
The sixth hypothesis about the term I being farther from the term We in
native English speakers compared to non-native speakers, in people originating
from individualistic cultures compared to those from collectivistic cultures and
in people whose native languages allow dropping personal pronouns from the
sentence compared to those whose native languages do not allow it was checked
comparing the results for I and We from the calculated similarity matrices for
the subsamples.
– Native English speakers – 57%; Non-native speakers – 63%;
– Participants, individualistic cultures – 59%; Collectivistic cultures – 65%;
– Participants, NPD native languages – 58%; PD native languages – 65%.
The hypothesis was confi rmed in terms of percentages.
T-test (method of Plohinskii):
– for native/non-native English speakers t = 0,3615 (tcrit = 2,004 for p<0,05)
– for individualistic/collectivistic cultures t = 0,4055 (tcrit = 2,004 for
p<0,05)
– for NPD/PD native languages t = 0,5586 (tcrit = 2,004 for p<0,05)
The hypothesis was rejected in terms of statistical signifi cance of the
differences.
77
Hypothesis 7) says “The term I is closer to the terms with internal locus
of responsibility and farther from those with external locus of responsibility in
native English speakers compared to non-native speakers, in people originating
from individualistic cultures compared to those from collectivistic cultures
and in people with NPD native languages compared to those with PD native
languages”.
The terms across the autonomy/heteronomy dimension are: Chance,
Compulsion, Liability, Obligation, Responsibility, Control, Care, Choice,
Interest, Will. We presumed that the fi rst 5 of them have an external locus
of responsibility, and the latter 5 have an internal locus of responsibility. We
checked the hypothesis by comparison of the percentage values in the similarity
matrices and by means of t-test for percentages (method of Plohinskii). The
results are presented in Table 9 below. The results supporting the hypothesis
are in bold font.
TABLE 9
Hypothesis 7) check results
For both native and non-native speakers of English the hypothesis was
confi rmed comparing percentages, for the terms Compulsion, Liability,
Obligation, Control and Choice. It was rejected for the terms Chance,
Responsibility, Care, Interest and Will.
For the participants from both individualistic and collectivistic cultures
the hypothesis was confi rmed in terms of percentages, for all terms except for
Care and Interest.
For the participants with native NPD/PD languages the hypothesis was
confi rmed in terms of percentages, for Chance, Obligation, Control, Choice
78
and Will. For Compulsion, Liability, Responsibility, Care and Interest it was
rejected.
The only statistically signifi cant result is for the term Choice in NPD/PD
language carriers comparison: t = 2,1917 (tcrit = 2,004 for p<0,05). Hypothesis
8) was rejected in terms of statistical signifi cance of the differences.
Cluster analysis
Dendrograms were created from the similarity matrices for the general
sample (Figure 4 below) and for the 8 subsamples (Figures 5 – 12 below) using
1-Pearson r. A cross section at number 3 divides all dendrograms into three
main branches/semantic fi elds.
79
80
81
82
83
Branch 1 – “Social” psychosemantic fi eld
This fi eld consists mostly of terms meaning social categories on all
dendrograms. Its “permanent members” are the terms I, Partner, Family, Child,
Friend, We and Stranger. All of them belong to the social dimension. This
fi eld includes also the term Care which originally belongs to the autonomy
dimension. The rest of the social terms – Society, State, and Life – meaning the
largest social groups – are not permanently present. The women placed Society
into the second semantic fi eld. Life was placed in the second fi eld by three
subsamples: native English speakers, those from individualistic cultures and
those with NPD native languages. The term State was classifi ed as a member
of the second semantic fi eld by all participants except for the non-native
English speakers, those from individualistic cultures and those with PD native
languages.
Branch 2 – “The fi eld of responsibility and negatives”
State is the only social category-permanent member of this fi eld.
This fi eld consists of the same terms: State, Control, Ownership, Liability,
Obligation, Responsibility, Compulsion, Punishment, Weakness, Ignorance,
Guilt and Worry on 6 out of 9 dendrograms. State, Control и Ownership appear
together in 5 out of 9 dendrograms. Control and Ownership are together in 2 of
the remaining 4. Responsibility, Obligation and Liability are a part of the same
subbranch in 7 out of 9 dendrograms.
The last 6 terms of this main branch (Compulsion, Punishment, Weakness,
Ignorance, Guilt and Worry) form the compact “Subfi eld of compulsion and
negative prerequisites and consequences”, are present on all dendrograms.
Branch 3 – “The fi eld of freedom and positives”
The third main psychosemantic fi eld includes terms with internal locus of
responsibility and prerequisites/consequences of responsibility with positive
connotations. On the dendrogram of the general sample it consists of the terms
Chance, Choice, Will, Interest, Effort, Ability, Award and Attention. Three
subsample’s dendrograms contain a social category term (Life): those of the
native English speakers, participants from collectivistic cultures and those with
NPD native languages.
Some terms from this branch exchanged their places with terms from the
“Subfi eld of compulsion and negative prerequisites and consequences of the
responsibility” on the diagrams of women, non-native English speakers and
those from collectivistic cultures, and formed a “Subfi eld of responsibility and
positive prerequisites and consequences of responsibility” where State is not
present.
84
State, Control and Ownership form a subbranch on the men’s diagram.
Women put these terms into different groups. Society was put by the participants
from the men’s group into the fi rst semantic fi eld. Women classifi ed it in the
second. Men put Responsibility and Obligation in the second fi eld. Women put
them in the third fi eld.
The structure of responsibility of the men’s subsample is similar to that
of the participants from individualistic cultures. 63% of the men-participants
are from individualistic cultures. This could explain the similarity to some
extent. The structure of the women’s subsample is very similar to that of the
participants from collectivistic cultures. An origin from collectivistic cultures
could explain 34% of the similarity.
The largest deviations from the dendrogram of the general sample show
the dendrograms of the women’s and collectivistic cultures’ subsamples which
are very similar to each other. The terms Society is in the second main branch
on the women’s dendrogram together with Compulsion, Liability, Control,
Guilt, Punishment, Weakness, Worry and Ignorance. State and Society are
connected to the fi rst main branch together with the rest of the social terms on
the dendrogram of the subsample from collectivistic cultures.
Men, native English speakers, and people from individualistic cultures
group the terms State, Control and Ownership together. Women and people
from collectivistic cultures classify each one of them into other different groups.
Our assumption that native language and culture are activated while
working on a linguistic task in a foreign language at fast pace is supported by the
similarity between the dendrograms of the native English speakers, those from
individualistic cultures and those with NPD native languages (most languages
of the individualistic cultures were NPD languages). The dendrograms of the
opposite subsamples are also similar to each other.
Methodological limitations
1) Terms selection criteria were subjective; 2) Relatively few terms were
included: only 30 of more than 1500 words related to responsibility were
extracted from the created text corpus and tested; 3) No information was
collected on the participants’ thinking during their work on the task of words
classifi cation or about the meanings of the words they considered during the
classifi cation task. Such information could be gathered in a future study. 4)
A qualitative study could be of help to reveal the meanings of responsibility
spontaneously defi ned by people; 5) The results could be biased with respect to
the demographic profi le of the participants. The general sample consisted of well
educated people using electronic devices and with access to Internet. This could
induce an effect similar to the WEIRD effect; 6) The results could be biased due
to uncontrolled participation conditions; 7) Some of the participants could have
85
a poor command of English regardless of the declared B2 or higher level of
English language. This could increase the unsystematic bias; 8) The division of
the participants into individualistic/collectivistic cultural groups by the criteria
of their native language is arguably valid. An individualism/collectivism scale
would be applied in a future study; 10) The locus of responsibility assignation
criterion was subjective. Ratings-based approach is planned for a future
study. An application of a personal autonomy/heteronomy test would be also
an improvement. Parallel results from the Index of Autonomous Functioning
questionnaire could serve as a direct connection with the Self-Determination
Theory. 11) The software used to assign connotations to the words is at an
experimental stage. Its proposals for Life (negative connotation) and Punishment
(neutral connotation) seem unintuitive to us. In a future study connotation would
be assigned by the participants using ratings-based method.
Conclusions
It seems that people perceive responsibility as relatively distant from their
Self-concept. They perceive the responsibilities of their narrow social sphere
(partner, children, family, friends, care) as closer, and responsibilities of the
wider social sphere (society, state, responsibility, liability, obligation) as more
distant.
The Self-concept is related more strongly to terms with a locus of
responsibility closer to personality (e.g. “will”) and more weakly — to terms
with a locus of responsibility farther from personality (e.g. “obligation”). It
was confi rmed that “freedom and responsibility go together” to some extent, in
support of the Self-Determination Theory. People from individualistic cultures
associate their Self-concept with the terms with internal locus of responsibility
to a greater extent than people from collectivistic cultures and vice versa. The
differences are not statistically signifi cant. Further research is necessary to
confi rm or reject this tendency.
People associate their Self-concept more with the positive and neutral
prerequisites and consequences of responsibility than with the negative. This is
in confi rmation of the self-serving biased attribution effect.
General structure of responsibility for the chosen terms is relatively
independent from gender, culture and native language differences. It consists
of three main semantic fi elds. The fi rst of them consists of social terms, the
second – of terms related to the formal side of responsibility – state, ownership,
liability, compulsion, and the negative prerequisites/consequences of it: guilt,
worry, punishment. The third fi eld includes terms related to free will and the
positive prerequisites/consequences of responsibility.
It seems that responsibility has at least three dimensions: social distance,
heteronomy/autonomy, and emotional connotation.
86
Men and women arrange terms related to responsibility in a different way.
Men relate ownership closely to obligations and responsibilities, women – to
choice, abilities, interests. The structure of responsibility of men is similar to
that of people from individualistic cultures, of women – to that of people from
collectivistic cultures. Women and men equally associate their Self-concept
with care, family and children.
Responsibility structures of native English speakers, people from
individualistic cultures and people with NPD native languages are almost
identical. Responsibility structures of non-native English speakers, people
from collectivistic cultures and those with PD native languages are also very
similar to each other.
It seems that sex and native language infl uence the categorical structure of
responsibility to some extent.
Acknowledgements
To my supervisor, Professor E. Gerganov, for the many discussions, access
to his experience, papers, and extremely encouraging attitude. To the academic
staff of the Department of Cognitive Science and Psychology in New Bulgarian
University for their inspiring professionalism. To the enthusiasts who voluntarily
participated in this study. We also thank the Optimal Workshop Company for
the 3-month free academic license for the use of their online software.
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СРАВНИТЕЛНИ ПСИХОСЕМАНТИЧНИ РАЗСТОЯНИЯ
МЕЖДУ ПОНЯТИЕТО АЗ И ДРУГИ ПОНЯТИЯ,
СВЪРЗАНИ С ОТГОВОРНОСТТА – ЕКСПЛОРАТОРНО ИЗСЛЕДВАНЕ
Илина Маринова
Нов български университет
От текстов корпус, съставен от дефиниции в англоезични речници и ен-
циклопедии, са извлечени по определени критерии 30 понятия, свързани с
понятието „отговорност“. Връзките между тях и възприетия Аз-образ са из-
следвани по метода на свободната класификация на английски език сред 57
души с различни родни езици. Резултатите показват, че хората свързват отно-
сително слабо понятието „отговорност“ с личността си: повече с тесния со-
циален кръг и по-малко с широкия социален кръг, повече с понятия с локус на
отговорността по-близо до личността (например „воля“), отколкото с понятия
с по-отдалечен локус на отговорността (например „задължение“), повече с по-
зитивни предпоставки и последствия от поемането на отговорност, отколкото
с негативни. Полът и родният език влияят върху категорийната структура на
отговорността до известна степен.