|
|
Article: Categorical induction as hypothesis assessment.
- Article from:
- The Psychological Record
- Article date:
- January 1, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 The Psychological Record. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
The act of generalizing the properties of a previously observed thing to a novel thing or to a whole category of things is quite pervasive in our day-to-day lives. We frequently generalize properties from one instance of a category to another instance of the same category (e.g., "My new collie will probably have the same funny eating habits that my first collie had."); from instances to categories (e.g., "My boyfriend drives me crazy with his take-charge attitude. I think that all men must be endowed with some kind of domination impulse."); and from one category to another (e.g., "These new Russian immigrants will probably be just as clannish as the Chinese immigrants ...