Introduction:

Here is the word list used in my latest self-complexity studies (starting with Rafaeli-Mor, Gotlib & Revelle, 1999). You are most welcome to use it, but you may want to consider words that are appropriate for the population you study. For example, I obtained these words by having a sample of Northwestern undergraduates provide descriptors of themselves in social and achievement settings, and of others who they view as "total success" and "total failure". I wanted (a) a balance of positive and negative words; (b) coverage of all Big-5 domains of personality (with markers for both poles of each domain), and (c) words of at least moderately frequent use (i.e., at least 2 people in the pre-testing group used them). A longer list of words was generated, which was narrowed down using Roget's thesaurus to a managable size.

To compute Scott's H, as well as additional indices (including compartmentalization, statistics of usage and re-usage of words, and of course our own measures of numerosity and overlap) I use a C++ program I've written. I'll gladly share this program, altough it's (a) not very friendly (no nice interface, very strict rules about the data structure); and (b) useful only for this particular set of 44 words. If you are familiar with C or C++, you're welcome to have the code itself, and tailor it to any set of words. Please email me with further questions.

Back to the Affect and Relationships Lab.

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The words:

1 boring
2 focused
3 optimistic
4 dishonest
5 dependent
6 honest
7 agreeable
8 nervous
9 happy
10 loyal
11 unmotivated
12 content
13 intelligent
14 sad
15 relaxed
16 confused
17 calm
18 lazy
19 ambitious
20 insecure
21 lonely
22 independent
23 unfriendly
24 active
25 mean
26 uncaring
27 selfish
28 considerate
29 secure
30 irresponsible
31 interesting
32 immature
33 avoidant
34 mature
35 stressed
36 trustworthy
37 helpful
38 discontent
39 creative
40 confident
41 unintelligent
42 pessimistic
43 conscientious
44 friendly