Characteristics of Association Words about Love among Tibetan College Students in China

In order to explore the characteristics of Tibetan college students’ association words about “love” under the background of social transformation in China, 239 Tibetan college students in Southwest Minzu University were selected as research objects to associate Chinese words with the stimulate word “love”. After all the association words collected were sorted out, statistical analyses like word frequency, association intensity and Chi-square test were carried out. Results showed that both “love experience” and “commitment” categories were important in Tibetan college students’ association words; men were more likely to think of the “love representation “ and “Love experience B”(feeling of miss in love) categories, while women tended to experience “Love experience A”(sweet feeling in love); who were single but had intimate experience are more likely to associate words of “pain of loss” category; and as a whole, Tibetan college students paid less attention to “rationality”, “Joint action” and “dullness” categories.

KEYWORDS: Tibetan students, love concept, word association, implicit theory.