Semantic differential
This article may be too technical for most readers to understand.(June 2023) |
Semantic differential | |
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MeSH | D012659 |
The semantic differential (SD) is a measurement scale designed to measure a person's subjective perception of, and affective reactions to, the properties of concepts, objects, and events by making use of a set of bipolar scales. The SD is used to assess one's
The SD has been used in both a general and a more specific way.
Guidelines for using the SD
Verhagen and colleagues introduce a framework to assist researchers in applying the semantic differential. The framework, which consists of six subsequent steps, advocates particular attention for collecting the set of relevant bipolar scales, linguistic testing of semantic bipolarity, and establishing semantic differential dimensionality.[11]
A detailed presentation on the development of the semantic differential is provided in Cross-Cultural Universals of Affective Meaning.[12] David R. Heise's Surveying Cultures[13] provides a contemporary update with special attention to measurement issues when using computerized graphic rating scales.
One possible problem with this scale is that its
Application in attitude research
The semantic differential is today one of the most widely used scales used in the measurement of attitudes. One of the reasons is the versatility of the items. The bipolar adjective pairs can be used for a wide variety of subjects, and as such the scale is called by some "the ever ready battery" of the attitude researcher.[14] A specific form of the SD, Projective Semantics method [15] uses only most common and neutral nouns that correspond to the 7 groups (factors) of adjective-scales most consistently found in cross-cultural studies (Evaluation, Potency, Activity as found by Osgood, and Reality, Organization, Complexity, Limitation as found in other studies). In this method, seven groups of bipolar adjective scales corresponded to seven types of nouns so the method was thought to have the object-scale symmetry (OSS) between the scales and nouns for evaluation using these scales. For example, the nouns corresponding to the listed 7 factors would be: Beauty, Power, Motion, Life, Work, Chaos, Law. Beauty was expected to be assessed unequivocally as “very good” on adjectives of Evaluation-related scales, Life as “very real” on Reality-related scales, etc. However, deviations in this symmetric and very basic matrix might show underlying biases of two types: scales-related bias and objects-related bias. This OSS design had meant to increase the sensitivity of the SD method to any semantic biases in responses of people within the same culture and educational background.[16][17]
Five items (five bipolar pairs of adjectives) have been proven to yield reliable findings, which highly correlate with alternative Likert numerical measures of the same attitude.[18]
Application in CIA psychological warfare
In 1958, as part of the
Theoretical background
Nominalists and realists
Theoretical underpinnings of
Use of adjectives
The development of this instrument provides an interesting insight into the broader area between linguistics and psychology. People have been describing each other since they developed the ability to speak. Most adjectives can also be used as personality descriptors. The occurrence of thousands of adjectives in English is an attestation of the subtleties in descriptions of persons and their behavior available to speakers of English. Roget's Thesaurus is an early attempt to classify most adjectives into categories and was used within this context to reduce the number of adjectives to manageable subsets, suitable for factor analysis.
Factors of Evaluation, Potency, and Activity
Osgood and his colleagues performed a factor analysis of large collections of semantic differential scales and found three recurring attitudes that people use to evaluate words and phrases: evaluation, potency, and activity. Evaluation loads highest on the adjective pair 'good-bad'. The 'strong-weak' adjective pair defines the potency factor. Adjective pair 'active-passive' defines the activity factor. These three dimensions of affective meaning were found to be cross-cultural universals in a study of dozens of cultures.
This factorial structure makes intuitive sense. When our ancestors encountered a person, the initial perception had to be whether that person represents a danger. Is the person good or bad? Next, is the person strong or weak? Our reactions to a person markedly differ if perceived as good and strong, good and weak, bad and weak, or bad and strong. Subsequently, we might extend our initial classification to include cases of persons who actively threaten us or represent only a potential danger, and so on. The evaluation, potency and activity factors thus encompass a detailed descriptive system of personality. Osgood's semantic differential measures these three factors. It contains sets of adjective pairs such as warm-cold, bright-dark, beautiful-ugly, sweet-bitter, fair-unfair, brave-cowardly, meaningful-meaningless.
The studies of Osgood and his colleagues revealed that the evaluative factor accounted for most of the variance in scalings, and related this to the idea of attitudes.[21]
Subsequent studies: factors of Typicality-Reality, Complexity, Organisation and Stimulation
Studies using the SD found additional universal dimensions. More specifically several researchers reported a factor of "Typicality" (that included scales such as “regular-rare”, “typical-exclusive”) [22][16] or "Reality" (“imaginary-real”, “evident-fantastic”, “abstract-concrete”),[16][23][24] as well as factors of "Complexity" ("complex-simple", "unlimited-limited", "mysterious-usual"), "Improvement" or "Organization" ("regular-spasmodic", "constant-changeable", "organized-disorganized", "precise-indefinite"), Stimulation ("interesting-boring", "trivial-new").[16][23][24]
Nobel Prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman's doctoral thesis was on the subject of the Semantic Differential.[25]
See also
- Likert scale
- Componential analysis
- Semantic gap
- Semantic similarity
- Semantic similarity network
- Structural differential
- Thurstone scale
References
- JSTOR 3151152.
- .
- S2CID 523148.
- ^ Osgood, C. E., May, W. H., and Miron, M. S. (1975). Cross-Cultural Universals of Affective Meaning. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
- ^ Osgood, C.E., Suci, G., & Tannenbaum, P. (1957). The measurement of meaning. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
- ^ Snider, J.G., and Osgood, C.E. (1969). Semantic Differential Technique: A Sourcebook. Chicago: Aldine.
- .
- .
- S2CID 1854026.
- .
- .
- ^ Osgood, May, and Miron (1975)
- ^ Heise (2010)
- ^ a b Himmelfarb (1993) p 57
- PMID 24475048.
- ^ .
- S2CID 4828135.
- ^ Osgood, Suci and Tannebaum (1957).
- ^ Landis, Fred (1982). "CIA Psychological Warfare Operations in Nicaragua, Chile and Jamaica" (PDF). Science for the People. 14 (1).
- ^ Korzybski, A. (1933) Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-aristotelian Systems and General Semantics. Institute of General Semantics.
- ^ Himmelfarb (1993) p 56
- .
- ^ a b Petrenko, V.F. (1993). "Meaning as a unit of conscience". Journal of Russian and East European Psychology. 2: 3–29.
- ^ a b Rosch, E.H. (1978). "Principles of categorization". In: Rosch, E., Lloyd, B.B. (Eds.) Cognition and categorization. NJ: Hillsdale, pp. 560-567.
- ^ Kahneman, Daniel. An analytical model of the semantic differential (Thesis).
Notes
- Heise, David R. (2010). Surveying Cultures: Discovering Shared Conceptions and Sentiments. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
- Himmelfarb, S. (1993). The measurement of attitudes. In A.H. Eagly & S. Chaiken (Eds.), Psychology of Attitudes, 23-88. Thomson/Wadsworth.
- Krus, David J.; Ishigaki, Yoko (1992). "Contributions to Psychohistory: XIX. Kamikaze Pilots: The Japanese versus the American Perspective". Psychological Reports. 70 (2): 599–602. S2CID 29467384.
- Verhagen, T.; Hooff, B. van den; Meents, S. (2015). "Toward a Better Use of the Semantic Differential in IS Research: An Integrative Framework of Suggested Action". Journal of the Association for Information Systems. 16 (2): 1. doi:10.17705/1jais.00388. Archived from the originalon 2018-07-19.
External links
- Osgood, C. E. (1964). "Semantic differential technique in the comparative study of cultures". American Anthropologist. 66 (3): 171–200. .
- On-line Semantic Differential