Abstract
Three hundred and seventy-one Japanese undergraduates were requested to evaluate opposed concepts of right/left and masculinity/femininity on rating scales of 20 pairs of adjectives, and to categorize five pairs of opposed concepts into fields of right/left and masculinity/femininity. They were also asked to state the criteria by which they categorized the given concepts. According to the hypothesis of dual symbolic classification, positive relations exist between right and masculinity, and left and femininity. High positive correlations were found between evaluations of right and masculinity, and left and femininity. Results of categorizing the five pairs of opposed concepts indicated that active and positive properties were assigned to the concept field of right; however, the categorization into concept fields of masculinity and femininity was somewhat inconsistent. The subjects' categorization was considerably stable, yet the concepts considered to be opposed to each other were not necessarily categorized into opposed concept fields.
