The teco database: ecological and technological concepts at the interface between abstractness and concreteness

Ecology and Technology are two keywords of the era we inhabit. Knowing how people represent these domains is essential to inform adequate interventions aimed at promoting conscious behaviors. Here we investigated this aspect by taking insights from the literature on conceptual organization. Specifically, we hypothesized Ecological and Technological concepts might have a “hybrid” nature, at the edge between Abstract and Concrete concepts. We asked a sample of Italian participants to rate 200 concepts pertaining to Ecological (e.g., deforestation), Technological (e.g., Internet), Natural (e.g., water), and Geographical/Geopolitical domains (e.g., mountain, city) on 39 semantic dimensions, some of which traditionally investigated (e.g., Context Availability), and others completely new (e.g., Political Relevance). Results indicate that Ecological and Technological concepts, despite having concrete referents, were more similar to Abstract than Concrete concepts in Concreteness~Abstractness and other semantic dimensions (e.g., Interoception, Social Valence). Interestingly, for some dimensions, they displayed a “more abstract” pattern than that of more typical Abstract concepts—e.g., later and more linguistic acquisition, higher need of others to be understood. Moreover, a Principal Component Analysis revealed three major components that explained overall the conceptual organization of our set of concepts. The first component complements the rating results, with the opposition between concreteness~abstractness, where Ecological and Technological concepts lie in the most abstract extreme. A further Hierarchical Cluster Analysis supported this distinction. Overall, our results have a twofold relevance. On a theoretical side, they contribute to enrich theories on concepts, suggesting Ecological and Technological concepts are special conceptual domains questioning the concrete-abstract dichotomy; on a more pragmatic side, they might inform societal politics on these timely themes.