TY - JOUR

T1 - The big two dictionaries

T2 - Capturing agency and communion in natural language

AU - Pietraszkiewicz, Agnieszka

AU - Formanowicz, Magdalena

AU - Gustafsson Sendén, Marie

AU - Boyd, Ryan L.

AU - Sikström, Sverker

AU - Sczesny, Sabine

PY - 2019/8/1

Y1 - 2019/8/1

N2 - Four studies developed and validated two dictionaries to capture agentic and communal expressions in natural language. Their development followed the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) approach (Study 1) and we tested their validity with frequency-based analyses and semantic similarity measures. The newly developed Agency and Communion dictionaries were aligned with LIWC categories related to agency and communion (Study 2), and corresponded with subjective ratings (Study 3), confirming their convergent validity. Very low or absent correspondence between proposed dictionaries and unrelated LIWC categories demonstrated their discriminant validity (Study 2). Finally, we applied both dictionaries to language used in advertisements. In correspondence to gender stereotypes, male-dominated jobs were advertised with more agentic than communal words, and female-dominated jobs with more communal than agentic words (Study 4). Both dictionaries represent reliable tools for quantifying agentic and communal content in natural language, and will improve and facilitate future research on agency and communion.

AB - Four studies developed and validated two dictionaries to capture agentic and communal expressions in natural language. Their development followed the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) approach (Study 1) and we tested their validity with frequency-based analyses and semantic similarity measures. The newly developed Agency and Communion dictionaries were aligned with LIWC categories related to agency and communion (Study 2), and corresponded with subjective ratings (Study 3), confirming their convergent validity. Very low or absent correspondence between proposed dictionaries and unrelated LIWC categories demonstrated their discriminant validity (Study 2). Finally, we applied both dictionaries to language used in advertisements. In correspondence to gender stereotypes, male-dominated jobs were advertised with more agentic than communal words, and female-dominated jobs with more communal than agentic words (Study 4). Both dictionaries represent reliable tools for quantifying agentic and communal content in natural language, and will improve and facilitate future research on agency and communion.

KW - agency

KW - Big Two

KW - communion

KW - computerized text analysis

KW - Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count

KW - measurement

U2 - 10.1002/ejsp.2561

DO - 10.1002/ejsp.2561

M3 - Journal article

AN - SCOPUS:85061908899

VL - 49

SP - 871

EP - 887

JO - European Journal of Social Psychology

JF - European Journal of Social Psychology

SN - 0046-2772

IS - 5

ER -