High-Dimensional Perception with the Double Machine Learning Lens Model
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Traditional perceptual models are ill-equipped for the high-dimensional data, such as text embeddings, central to modern psychology and AI. We introduce the double machine learning lens model, a framework that utilizes machine learning to handle such data. We applied this model to analyze how a modern AI and human perceivers judge social class from 9,513 aspirational essays written by 11-year-olds in 1969. A systematic comparison of 45 analytical approaches revealed that regularized linear models using dimensionality-reduced language embeddings significantly outperformed traditional dictionary-based methods and more complex non-linear models. Our top model accurately predicted human ( R C V 2 = 0.61 ) $(R^{2}_{CV} =0.61)$ left parenthesis upper R Subscript upper C upper V Superscript 2 Baseline equals 0.61 right parenthesis and AI ( R C V 2 = 0.56 ) $(R^{2}_{CV} =0.56)$ left parenthesis upper R Subscript upper C upper V Superscript 2 Baseline equals 0.56 right parenthesis social class perceptions, capturing over 85% of the total accuracy. These results suggest that “unmodeled knowledge” in perception may be an artifact of insufficient measurement tools rather than an unmeasurable intuitive process. We find that both AI and humans use many of the same textual cues (e.g., grammar, occupations, and cultural activities), only a subset of which are valid. Both appear to amplify subtle, real-world patterns into powerful, yet potentially discriminatory heuristics, where a small difference in actual social class creates a large difference in perception.
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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 | 0.003 | 0.015 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
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".