The downside of categories.
One of the primary uses of categories is to draw inferences about novel objects based on their category membership. In a recent study, Lagnado and Shanks show that people make different inferences about an object depending on whether they first categorize the object at a general or specific level. Indeed, their inference changes even though they have been given no information about the object. This finding reveals limitations of category-based induction.
Murphy
Gregory L
GL
Department of Psychology, New York University, 6 Washington Place, New York, NY 10003, USA. gregory.murphy@nyu.edu