Inferring category attributes from exemplar attributes

Geometric shapes and social categories

Datos Bibliográficos

ID6199293
AutoresMyron Rothbart (University of Oregon), Scott Lewis (0000-0002-4183-1906), Scott M Lewis (0009-0005-8525-5356)
Año1988
Volumen55
Número6
Páginas861-872
Fecha de publicación1988-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of Personality and Social Psychology (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0022-3514 • E-ISSN: 1939-1315
EditorialAmerican Psychological Association (APA) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1037//0022-3514.55.6.861
PMID3216287
OpenAlexW4253561258
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas61
Referencias citadas23

Three experiments tested the hypothesis that judgments about the attributes of categories are disproportionately based on the characteristics of exemplars that best fit the category. In the first 2 experiments, subjects were presented with good and bad exemplars of categories with defining attributes (rectangles, triangles, pentagons, and ellipses) in which different colors were arbitrarily paired with the good and poor examples. In both experiments, subjects erroneously judged the colors paired with the good exemplars as more frequent than colors paired with the poor exemplars. A third experiment, using social categories, examined whether attributes associated with a single category member were more likely to generalize to the category as a whole for prototypical than for nonprototypical category members. Subjects were presented with information about individual fraternity members who varied in prototypicality, and the tendency to infer a target behavior (liberal vs. conservative voting behavior) from the individual fraternity member to the fraternity as a whole increased with the prototypicality of the category member. Implications for the contact hypothesis, category-exemplar relations, and belief stability are discussed

Categorization · Cognitive psychology · Fraternity · Impression formation · Perception · Social category · Social perception · Artificial Intelligence · Categorization, perception, and language · Computational and Text Analysis Methods · Computer Science · Cultural Differences and Values · Psychology · Social and Intergroup Psychology · Social Psychology