Relative Influence of Linguistic versus Cultural Factors on Free Verbal Associations

The extent to which differences in word associations between cultural groups are due to linguistic factors or to word meanings and values determined by culture was examined in the continued free word associations of Koreans in Korean and in English and a U. S. group in English. The influence of cultural background was at least as much as that of language on each of three characteristics examined. Further, much of the difference due to language seems to stem from the milieu of language acquisition.