Abstract:

This paper deals with people's attitudes toward nations and vacations. Attitudes were detected and measured in terms of the affective meaning of concepts. Such issues are not trivial, since people may evaluate highly (or poorly) a given country, and yet not evaluate highly (or poorly) the idea of spending their vacations in that country. The terms evaluation, potency and activity are to be understood in the specific sense given to them by Osgood et al. in the Semantic Differential (SD) technique. In our case, the SD technique was applied in 1982 to two different, and yet comparable, groups of Italian and Dutch individuals (students between 20 and 25 years of age) with regard to the following nations, and vacations in such nations: Belgium, Holland, West Germany, Italy, Spain, France, USA, USSR.