Lexical taxonomy and structure of dispositions attributed to countries

The study sought to identify the dispositional image of a country. In the first phase, we carried out 100 interviews with participants aged 17-67, asking them to free associate to names of 47 countries. Altogether 20,320 associations were collected and they were next subject to the lexical taxonomy by seven judges. Based on the frequency analysis, we isolated 85 most frequently used descriptors of countries᾿ traits. In the next phase, 279 people aged 16 to 70 described 40 countries with the help of the list of selected adjectives. The principle components analysis revealed a 3-factorial trait structure: Aggressiveness, Competence and Spontaneity. On the basis of these data we created two scales intended to measure a global and a specific structure of perception of countries in terms of personality traits.. The factorial structure and psychometric properties of the scales were positively verified in the third phase of research, with 276 participants aged 16 to 70. peerReviewed publishedVersion