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Related Experiment Videos

Inferring category attributes from exemplar attributes: geometric shapes and social categories.

M Rothbart1, S Lewis

  • 1Department of Psychology, University of Oregon, Eugene 97403-1227.

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
|December 1, 1988
PubMed
Summary

People judge categories based on their best examples. This study shows that even arbitrary attributes, like color, are associated more strongly with good category exemplars, influencing frequency judgments and generalizations.

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Social Psychology

Background:

  • Category judgments are influenced by exemplar characteristics.
  • The relationship between category prototypes and attribute generalization is not fully understood.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To test if category attribute judgments disproportionately rely on best-fitting exemplars.
  • To investigate how exemplar prototypicality affects attribute generalization to social categories.

Main Methods:

  • Three experiments were conducted using geometric shapes and social categories (fraternities).
  • Participants were presented with varying quality exemplars (good/bad) and individual members of differing prototypicality.
  • Arbitrary attribute pairings (color) and behavioral inferences (voting behavior) were analyzed.

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Main Results:

  • Subjects incorrectly judged colors paired with good exemplars as more frequent.
  • Attribute generalization to the category increased with exemplar prototypicality for social categories.

Conclusions:

  • Category judgments are heavily biased by prototypical or "good" exemplars.
  • Prototypicality significantly enhances the generalization of individual attributes to the category level.
  • Findings have implications for category-exemplar relations and belief stability.