Simplification and Shift in Cognition of Political Difference: Applying the Geometric Modeling to the Analysis of Semantic Similarity Judgment

Perceiving differences by means of spatial analogies is intrinsic to human cognition. Multi-dimensional scaling (MDS) analysis based on Minkowski geometry has been used primarily on data on sensory similarity judgments, leaving judgments on abstractive differences unanalyzed. Indeed, analysts have f...

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Main Authors:	Kato, Junko, Okada, Kensuke
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	Public Library of Science 2011
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3108968/

id	pubmed-3108968
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-31089682011-06-13 Simplification and Shift in Cognition of Political Difference: Applying the Geometric Modeling to the Analysis of Semantic Similarity Judgment Kato, Junko Okada, Kensuke Research Article Perceiving differences by means of spatial analogies is intrinsic to human cognition. Multi-dimensional scaling (MDS) analysis based on Minkowski geometry has been used primarily on data on sensory similarity judgments, leaving judgments on abstractive differences unanalyzed. Indeed, analysts have failed to find appropriate experimental or real-life data in this regard. Our MDS analysis used survey data on political scientists' judgments of the similarities and differences between political positions expressed in terms of distance. Both distance smoothing and majorization techniques were applied to a three-way dataset of similarity judgments provided by at least seven experts on at least five parties' positions on at least seven policies (i.e., originally yielding 245 dimensions) to substantially reduce the risk of local minima. The analysis found two dimensions, which were sufficient for mapping differences, and fit the city-block dimensions better than the Euclidean metric in all datasets obtained from 13 countries. Most city-block dimensions were highly correlated with the simplified criterion (i.e., the left–right ideology) for differences that are actually used in real politics. The isometry of the city-block and dominance metrics in two-dimensional space carries further implications. More specifically, individuals may pay attention to two dimensions (if represented in the city-block metric) or focus on a single dimension (if represented in the dominance metric) when judging differences between the same objects. Switching between metrics may be expected to occur during cognitive processing as frequently as the apparent discontinuities and shifts in human attention that may underlie changing judgments in real situations occur. Consequently, the result has extended strong support for the validity of the geometric models to represent an important social cognition, i.e., the one of political differences, which is deeply rooted in human nature. Public Library of Science 2011-06-06 /pmc/articles/PMC3108968/ /pubmed/21673959 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0020693 Text en Kato, Okada. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	Kato, Junko Okada, Kensuke
spellingShingle	Kato, Junko Okada, Kensuke Simplification and Shift in Cognition of Political Difference: Applying the Geometric Modeling to the Analysis of Semantic Similarity Judgment
author_facet	Kato, Junko Okada, Kensuke
author_sort	Kato, Junko
title	Simplification and Shift in Cognition of Political Difference: Applying the Geometric Modeling to the Analysis of Semantic Similarity Judgment
title_short	Simplification and Shift in Cognition of Political Difference: Applying the Geometric Modeling to the Analysis of Semantic Similarity Judgment
title_full	Simplification and Shift in Cognition of Political Difference: Applying the Geometric Modeling to the Analysis of Semantic Similarity Judgment
title_fullStr	Simplification and Shift in Cognition of Political Difference: Applying the Geometric Modeling to the Analysis of Semantic Similarity Judgment
title_full_unstemmed	Simplification and Shift in Cognition of Political Difference: Applying the Geometric Modeling to the Analysis of Semantic Similarity Judgment
title_sort	simplification and shift in cognition of political difference: applying the geometric modeling to the analysis of semantic similarity judgment
description	Perceiving differences by means of spatial analogies is intrinsic to human cognition. Multi-dimensional scaling (MDS) analysis based on Minkowski geometry has been used primarily on data on sensory similarity judgments, leaving judgments on abstractive differences unanalyzed. Indeed, analysts have failed to find appropriate experimental or real-life data in this regard. Our MDS analysis used survey data on political scientists' judgments of the similarities and differences between political positions expressed in terms of distance. Both distance smoothing and majorization techniques were applied to a three-way dataset of similarity judgments provided by at least seven experts on at least five parties' positions on at least seven policies (i.e., originally yielding 245 dimensions) to substantially reduce the risk of local minima. The analysis found two dimensions, which were sufficient for mapping differences, and fit the city-block dimensions better than the Euclidean metric in all datasets obtained from 13 countries. Most city-block dimensions were highly correlated with the simplified criterion (i.e., the left–right ideology) for differences that are actually used in real politics. The isometry of the city-block and dominance metrics in two-dimensional space carries further implications. More specifically, individuals may pay attention to two dimensions (if represented in the city-block metric) or focus on a single dimension (if represented in the dominance metric) when judging differences between the same objects. Switching between metrics may be expected to occur during cognitive processing as frequently as the apparent discontinuities and shifts in human attention that may underlie changing judgments in real situations occur. Consequently, the result has extended strong support for the validity of the geometric models to represent an important social cognition, i.e., the one of political differences, which is deeply rooted in human nature.
publisher	Public Library of Science
publishDate	2011
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3108968/
_version_	1611457838385725440

Simplification and Shift in Cognition of Political Difference: Applying the Geometric Modeling to the Analysis of Semantic Similarity Judgment

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