Basic Concepts for a Psychology of Personality

Previous research has indicated a difference between taboo and nontaboo words rated as upsetting in that the former are learned more easily than matched neutral words, while the latter are not. In an effort to determine the source of this differential effect, a four trial study was performed on 64 female college students. The effects of rate and organization of list presentation on the learning of the two types of emotional words were compared to the learning of neutral words. Earlier results demonstrating the significant superiority of taboo but not of upsetting words over matched neutral counterparts were replicated. It was also determined that experimental conditions which result in generally poor performance and low rates of clustering (e.g., early trials, uncategorized list presentation) accentuated the taboo word effect.