Attitude Research for Intercultural Communication and Interaction

Abstract

The attitude data available on foreign groups are generally not enough for reconstructing their perception of a theme or problem. Attitude data show, for instance, whether a foreign group is for or against socialism, but they will not reveal whether the members of the group use the word socialism to refer to democracy or to communism, nor whether they identify it with Sweden or Red China, etc. The Associative Group Analysis technique (AGA)-which relies on the comparative analysis of free verbal associations produced by samples of people from the investigator's own and his target culture-offers attitude data as well as data on denotative, referential meanings. An associationbased attitude index has shown as a group measure high positive correlation with the criterion measures of the Semantic Differential evaluation scales and an attitude questionnaire. A second method of analysis focusing on the denotative, referential meaning was applied to universally approved value concepts: freedom, equality, etc. U.S. and Korean groups (N = 50) were tested, and the analysis has shown a variety of different culturally specific denotative components. The findings support Sapir's observation about the deceptive nature of certain universally approved “labels” to which various people attach different interpretations.