Field-dependence and social responsiveness as determinants of spontaneously produced words.

ABSTRACT This study measured responsiveness to the immediate environment on the basis of the social (vs. neutral) content of a person's free associations, in an effort to relate this responsiveness to field-dependence. The results lend support to the view that field-dependence is associated with social responsiveness in word association. Two aspects of social responsiveness in word associations were studied: (1) preference for external cues; and (2) preference for social (as opposed to neutral) content regardless of external or internal cues. Correlations between external cues and social content were quite low in all conditions. The field-dependent subjects revealed their social responsiveness in several ways: (1) by giving more externally-related words; (2) by giving more social content words; and (3) by giving more incidental words when the