Testing bipolarity.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Many psychological dimensions seem bipolar (e.g., happy-sad, optimism-pessimism, and introversion-extraversion). However, seeming opposites frequently do not act the way researchers predict real opposites would: having correlations near -1, loading on the same factor, and having relations with external variables that are equal in magnitude and opposite in sign. We argue these predictions are often incorrect because the bipolar model has been misspecified or specified too narrowly. We therefore explicitly define a general bipolar model for ideal error-free data and then extend this model to empirical data influenced by random and systematic measurement error. Our model shows the predictions above are correct only under restrictive circumstances that are unlikely to apply in practice. Moreover, if a bipolar dimension is divided into two so that researchers can test bipolarity, our model shows that the correlation between the two can be far from -1; thus, strategies based upon Pearson product-moment correlations and their factor analyses do not test if variables are opposites. Moreover, the two parts need not be mutually exclusive; thus, measures of co-occurrence do not test if variables are opposites. We offer alternative strategies for testing if variables are opposites, strategies based upon censored data analysis. Our model and findings have implications not just for testing bipolarity, but also for associated theory and measurement, and they expose potential artifacts in correlational and dimensional analyses involving any type of negative relations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.021 | 0.125 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.013 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".