ISBN: 0542185784 9780542185786

Category: Unavailable

Page count: 162

Experiment 1 used an unobtrusive measure of categorization and showed that the cultural theory, but not the genetic theory, strengthened category encoding. Experiment 2 used a trait generalization paradigm and showed that the cultural theory supported inductive inferences about social characteristics, whereas the genetic theory did not support any inductive inferences at all. These findings were interpreted to mean that the genetic theory failed to satisfy the criteria necessary to activate essentialism, and that the cultural theory may have led the target category to be perceived as a coalition. Coalitional thinking about the category endowed it with potency in categorization and induction.