BERTAgent: The Development of a Novel Tool to Quantify Agency in Textual Data
BERTAgent: The Development of a Novel Tool to Quantify Agency in Textual Data
StatusPost-Print
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Authors
Nikadon, Jan
Suitner, Caterina
Erseghe, Tomaso
Dzanko, Lejla
Formanowicz, Magdalena
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Date
2025-07
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Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
Issue
7
Volume
154
Pages
Pages
1855–1877
ISSN
0096-3445
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Access date
2026-01-12
Abstract PL
Abstract EN
Pertaining to goal orientation and achievement, agency is a fundamental aspect of human cognition and behavior. Accordingly, detecting and quantifying linguistic encoding of agency are critical for the analysis of human actions, interactions, and social dynamics. Available agency-quantifying computational tools rely on word-counting methods, which typically are insensitive to the semantic context in which the words are used and consequently prone to miscoding, for example, in case of polysemy. Additionally, some currently available tools do not take into account differences in the intensity and directionality of agency. In order to overcome these shortcomings, we present BERTAgent, a novel tool to quantify semantic agency in text. BERTAgent is a computational language model that utilizes the transformers architecture, a popular deep learning approach to natural language processing. BERTAgent was fine-tuned using textual data that were evaluated by human coders with respect to the level of conveyed agency. In four validation studies, BERTAgent exhibits improved convergent and discriminant validity compared to previous solutions. Additionally, the detailed description of BERTAgent’s development procedure serves as a tutorial for the advancement of similar tools, providing a blueprint for leveraging the existing lexicographical data sets in conjunction with the deep learning techniques in order to detect and quantify other psychological constructs in textual data. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
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Keywords PL
Keywords EN
linguistic agency
natural language processing
psychological construct detection
natural language processing
psychological construct detection
Keywords other
Sustainable Development Goals
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Rola Językowych Markerów Sprawczości w Mobilizacji Działań Kolektywnych
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