A striking similarity with Alpaerts’ Genetic Semantic theory, which is at the basis of the Semantic Colour Space, is Osgood’s (1964) Semantic differential technique that focuses on three affective dimensions of Evaluation, Potency, and Activity (E-P-A) to evaluate social and cultural related concepts in a valid and reliable way.

	Osgood	Alpaerts
Depth	Evaluation: bad-good, unpleasant-pleasant	Direction: internal-external, unpleasant-pleasant
Height	Potency: strong-weak	Power: strong-weak
Breadth	Activity: passive-active	Activity: passive-active

“The highly generalized nature of the affective reaction system-the fact
that it is independent of any particular sensory modality and yet participates
with all of them-appears to be the psychological basis for the universality
of three factors of Evaluation, Potency, and Activity, as well as the basis for
Synaesthesia and metaphor. That is, it appears to be because such diverse
sensory experiences as a white circle (rather than black), a straight line (rather
than crooked), a rising melody (rather than a falling one), a sweet taste (rather
than a sour one), a caressing touch (rather than an irritating scratch) can
all share a common affective meaning that one can easily and lawfully translate
from one modality into another in synaesthesia and metaphor. The labelling
of this shared affective response is apparently uncovered in the factor analysis
of adjectives.
Speculating still further, I would suggest that this affective meaning system
is intimately related to the non-specific projection mechanisms from the hypothalamic,
reticular, or limbic systems and their cortical connections in the
frontal lobes. Both are gross, non-discriminative, but highly generalized systems,
and both are associated with the emotional purposive and motivational
dynamics of the organism.” (Osgood, 1964)