The semantic differential is a measure of the
connotative "distance" between
two concepts. For instance, "sun" and "beach" may be closer connotatively
than "
cornbread" and "
blasting caps". It is an important tool for
psychologists because it allows them to measure on a consistent scale
people's reactions to concepts and ideas.
The Genesis of the Semantic Differential
The technique was developed in the 1950s by a psychologist named Charles
Osgood and described in his 1957 book The Measurement of Meaning.
Osgood was interested in measuring connotation, and needed a method for doing
so. What he did was generate a list of words and ask people to free-associate
with them-- to give him the first word that occurred to them upon reading each
word in his list. He then took the words from the free-association, determined
their opposites, and created a bipolar scale based on them. Now any word
could be rated on a series of these bipolar scales: is "dog" closer to "hot"
or "cold"; closer to "fast" or "slow"; closer to "happy" or "sad"?
Calculating the differences between results for two different words on the
individual antonym-based scales provides you with their semantic differential.
The EPA Structure
Another experiment was conducted in which antonym pairs were pulled from
Roget's Thesaurus and students were asked to rate a set of
concepts along a scale between the two words in each antonym pair. When the correlations
were calculated, a structure emerged which also described the results of
earlier studies: All variations could be reduced to three basic dimensions,
described as Evaluation, Potency, and Activity. "Evaluation" refers to the
idea that something is considered good or bad to some degree. "Potency" is a
measure of how strong or powerful the subject is considered to be. "Activity"
describes the degree to which the subject is considered, well, active.
Together, these three facets form what is known as the EPA Structure, which
has been shown through subsequent experimentation to hold up in many very distinct cultures.
The Semantic Space
Plotting concepts as points on a graph-- using the three facets of the EPA
structure as axes-- one can construct a "semantic space" which visualizes
the connotative responses engendered by those concepts. Interesting
comparisons and relationships can be drawn among concepts plotted in the
semantic space using normal three-dimensional geometry, making it a very
useful analytical tool for psychologists.
Sources
Dr. Jack Feldman's PSY2210 class at Georgia Tech
http://www.indiana.edu/~socpsy/papers/AttMeasure/attitude..htm
http://www.writing.ws/reference/history.htm