Psychological Constructs in Shared Semantic Space
For psychologists and social scientists, this provides a method to compare constructs across different instruments and traditions, though results are exploratory and not yet validated for practical use.
The paper proposes a framework to make psychological constructs commensurate by representing them as directions in a shared word-embedding space, using Supervised Semantic Differential. Initial tests on VAD, GoEmotions, and Big Five personality constructs show coherent placements, suggesting embedding spaces can support cross-measurement comparison.
Psychological constructs are often measured in separate instruments, datasets, and research traditions, which makes direct comparison difficult. This paper proposes a framework for making such constructs semantically commensurate by representing and comparing them as directions in a shared word-embedding space. Using Supervised Semantic Differential, we estimate construct-specific semantic gradients from text-outcome associations and project them onto theoretically motivated reference axes. As an initial test case, we use Valence, Arousal, and Dominance (VAD) as an affective coordinate system. First, we recover interpretable VAD directions from English word-level affective norms. Second, we project semantic gradients for 27 GoEmotions categories into this space and recover the expected organization of emotions, especially along valence and arousal. Third, we apply the same procedure to Big Five personality domains and facets derived from IPIP-NEO-300 item-factor associations. Domain-level placements are broadly coherent, while facet-level results are more exploratory because they rely on sparse questionnaire text. The results suggest that embedding spaces can support construct-level comparison across otherwise incommensurable psychological measurements, provided that semantic placements are assessed for stability and interpretability.