Abstract
We attempted to replicate findings of a frequently cited study by Motley. This author had used a tachistoskope to present his participants pairs of words which had a meaning after exchanging the initial letters of each word ("spoonerisms"). In accordance with the psychoanalytic theory of Freudian slips, Motley was able to show that under the impression of a sexually stimulating situation more sexual words were read; under the threat of electric shock spoonerisms appeared more often in words with reference to electricity. In our study we tried to induce spoonerisms by presentation of short written texts of erotic, aggressive and neutral content. It could be shown that after reading the erotic and the aggressive text, slips were produced more often than following the text of neutral content. In addition, significantly more slips of erotic kind occurred after reading the erotic text, whereas more aggressive slips were observed immediately after lecture of the text with aggressive content. We were therefore able to replicate Motley's findings and thus also corroborated assumptions made by Freud on the origin of slips of the tongue.
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