Direct assessment of individual connotation and experience: An introduction to cognitive-affective mapping

TL;DR

This paper introduces cognitive-affective maps (CAMs) as a new graphical tool for visualizing and assessing individual attitudes, beliefs, and emotional connotations, supported by software for empirical data collection.

Contribution

It presents CAMs as a novel, versatile method bridging qualitative and quantitative research, with theoretical background, practical application, and analysis options.

Findings

CAMs effectively visualize mental networks of attitudes and emotions

The Valence software facilitates empirical data collection using CAMs

CAMs serve as a methodological bridge between qualitative and quantitative approaches

Abstract

We introduce cognitive-affective maps (CAMs) as a novel tool to assess individual experiences and belief systems. CAMs were first presented by the cognitive scientist and philosopher Paul Thagard as a graphical representation of a mental network, visualizing attitudes, thoughts, and affective connotations toward the topic of interest. While CAMs were originally used primarily to visualize existing data, the recent release of the new software tool Valence has facilitated the applicability of CAMs for empirical data collection. In this article, we explain the concept and the theoretical background of CAMs. We exemplify how CAMs can be applied in research practice, including different options for analysis. We propose CAMs as a user-friendly and versatile methodological bridge between qualitative and quantitative research approaches and encourage incorporating the method into studies to access and visualize human attitudes and experience.