Accession Number:

ADA618912

Title:

Latent Scope Bias in Categorization

Descriptive Note:

Journal article

Corporate Author:

NAVAL RESEARCH LAB WASHINGTON DC NAVY CENTER FOR APPLIED RESEARCH IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Personal Author(s):

• Sussman, Abigail B.
• Khemlani, Sangeet S.
• Oppenheimer, Daniel M.

Report Date:

2014-01-01

Pagination or Media Count:

9.0

Abstract:

Categories often have unobservable diagnostic features. For example, if a person is a lawyer, one might expect him to be both well dressed and knowledgeable about the law. However, without observing the person in a courtroom, one cannot tell whether or not he is knowledgeable about the law. How might we categorize the well-dressed person before we know whether or not he possesses a particular category feature Two studies showed that, all else equal, individuals prefer to group exemplars into categories that specify fewer unobserved and unobservable features--i.e., those that have a narrower latent scope--to those with a broader latent scope. In Experiment 1, participants were more likely to classify novel exemplars as part of a social category that had a narrower latent scope in a verbal task. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the scope bias generalizes to contexts in which category structure is never explicitly specified.

Descriptors:

• *BIAS
• *EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
• *PERCEPTION(PSYCHOLOGY)
• *PERFORMANCE(HUMAN)
• CLASSIFICATION
• COGNITION
• CONDITIONING(LEARNING)
• DECISION MAKING
• INFORMATION PROCESSING
• JUDGEMENT(PSYCHOLOGY)
• MATHEMATICAL PREDICTION
• REASONING
• SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
• VERBAL BEHAVIOR

Subject Categories:

• Sociology and Law
• Psychology

Distribution Statement:

APPROVED FOR PUBLIC RELEASE