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Abstract

This experiment was designed to investigate the effects of role-playing instructions on five word-association behavioral indices. 90 words varying in associative difficulty and in affective connotation were administered as a word-association test to 72 undergraduates. Ss were randomly assigned to one of three groups and were tested under standard, ‘fake good,’ and ‘fake bad’ instructions. Set significantly influenced mean reaction time, response repetition, forgetting, and ‘misremembering’ but did not interact with affective connotation. This lack of interaction was interpreted as favorable for the use of the word-association technique since no evidence was shown that set distorted the influence of affective connotation. All the set mean effects except that of reaction time reflected the influence of the ‘fake bad’ set.

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Effects of Faking Instructions on the Word-Association Test

Abstract

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References