Results of Some Experiments on Affection, Distribution of Associations and Recall.
Charles H. Griffitts · Journal of Experimental Psychology · 1920
The data presented in this report represents the result of some preliminary spade-work which has for its goal a means of measuring individual differences in cheerfulness.The immediate stimulus for the first experiment was the appearance in 1917 of the report by Baxter, Yamada, and Washburn, 1 which not only suggested a possible means of measuring temperaments, but also served to re-open the question of the relation between affection and recall.Later, the same year, the present writer gave a free, discrete association test three times to the same subjects, who designated as 'P,'' U* or '/' the nature of the association in each case, hoping to obtain information of the following points: (a) the relation between affection and recall, (b) the relation between scattering or concentration of associations for the three presentations, and recall, (c) the relation between this distribution of associations and the kind of affective response, and (d), the existence or non-existence of a general affective sensitivity.Nothing more was done until the last school year, when other similar experiments were given, partly to check up on the results of the first experiment, and partly to determine the results of correlating the scores of these later tests with self-estimates in cheerfulness.These experiments will be described later.Baxter, Yamada, and Washburn, in the article just mentioned, reported the results of an investigation in which they used two lists of stimulus-words, to one of which the subjects were required to get pleasant associations, to the other, unpleasant associations.The ratios of the average reaction