On the role of familiarity with units of measurement in categorical accentuation: Tajfel and Wilkes …
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VOL. 13, NO. 4, JULY 2002 ON THE ROLE OF FAMILIARITY WITH UNITS OF MEASUREMENT IN
CATEGORICAL ACCENTUATION: Tajfel and Wilkes (1963) Revisited and Replicated
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PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE
Research Report
ON THE ROLE OF FAMILIARITY WITH UNITS OF MEASUREMENT IN CATEGORICAL ACCENTUATION: Tajfel and Wilkes (1963) Revisited and Replicated Olivier Corneille,1 Olivier Klein,2 Sophie Lambert,2 and Charles M. Judd3
1
Catholic University of Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium; 2Free University of Brussels, Brussels, Belgium; and 3University of Colorado at Boulder
Abstract—The present article provides evidence for the role of participants’ familiarity with units of measurement in categorical accentuation with unidimensional physical estimates. Belgian and American participants estimated the lengths of lines varying in length. Depending on the condition, the lines were or were not systematically associated with categorical labels, and the estimates were made either in inches or in centimeters. Consistent with our predictions, (a) categorical accentuation was higher when the lines were systematically categorized than when they were not, and (b) this effect was stronger when participants reported their estimates in an unfamiliar measurement unit (i.e., Belgian participants using inches, and American participants using centimeters). These findings support the view that people’s reliance on categorical information is more likely to emerge given uncertain contexts of judgment. Additionally, they may help explain why researchers have had difficulties replicating the categorical accentuation effect in the past. Almost 40 years ago, Tajfel and Wilkes (1963) reported their nowclassic experiment in which they asked participants to estimate category exemplars (i.e., lines) that varied continuously along a physical dimension (i.e., length). Participants provided their estimates in one of three conditions: Longer lines were systematically given a different label from shorter lines, each line was randomly given one of the two labels, or no labels were presented. Tajfel and Wilkes sought to demonstrate the cognitive-perceptual origin of stereotypes, that is, the exaggeration of perceived differences (resemblances) between members of different (the same) social groups. Specifically, the authors predicted that the systematic association of categorical labels with exemplars that varied along a physical continuum would (a) increase the perceived differences between exemplars from different categories and (b) decrease the perceived differences among exemplars of the same category. The results were consistent with the first prediction: Participants perceived a greater difference between the shortest of the long lines and the longest of the short lines in the systematic-categorization condition than in the other two conditions. Thus, participants’ estimates of the exemplars that straddled the category boundaries were more differentiated in that condition than in the others. Despite its apparent simplicity, this study played a key role both in the study of the cognitive processes involved in stereotyping and in the elaboration of social identity theory (see, e.g., Hogg & Abrams, 1988;
Address correspondence to Olivier Corneille, Catholic University of Louvain, Department of Experimental Psychology (UPSO), Place du Cardinal Mercier, 10, B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium; e-mail: olivier.corneille@ psp.ucl.ac.be.
Tajfel, 1969, 1978). This categorical accentuation effect, somewhat akin to the categorical perception effect evidenced in a more recent literature (e.g., Harnad, 1987), gave rise to an abundant body of research in cognitive social psychology. Similar effects were observed in the context of estimates about attitude statements (Eiser, 1971; Eiser & Stroebe, 1972; Eiser & Van der Pligt, 1984; McGarty & Penny, 1988), trait valences (Krueger & Rothbart, 1990), daily temperatures (Krueger & Clement, 1994), body weights (Krueger, Rothbart, & Sriram, 1989), and colors (Goldstone, 1995). They were also shown to emerge in judgments of category exemplars that varied along multiple dimensions (Corneille & Judd, 1999; Ford & Stangor, 1992; Goldstone, 1994, 1996; Livingston, Andrews, & Harnad, 1998). Curiously, however, researchers had a hard time reproducing the classic effect when using the original paradigm, which, as discussed, involved estimates of line lengths (see, e.g., Andrews & Livingston, 2000; Lambert, 1999; McGarty, 1999). In his recent book on categorization in social psychology, McGarty (1999) noted that he had “lost count of the number of researchers who have told [him] that they attempted without success to replicate Tajfel and Wilkes’ results using the original labeled line-judgment paradigm or minor variations on it” (McGarty, 1999, p. 73). Even more recently, Andrews and Livingston (2000) repeatedly failed to replicate the original effect and suggested that Tajfel and Wilkes’s findings were probably due to demand characteristics of the task situation. These authors also noted that the effect could be obtained, but “only with multidimensional stimuli and only when the categories require learning (as opposed to the simple attachment of labels to known categories, as in Tajfel and Wilkes)” (Andrews & Livingston, 2000, p. 1015). In agreement with Andrews and Livingston (2000), we believe that multidimensionality and learning are likely to enhance categorical accentuation. The issue, however, is whether these conditions are necessary for the effect to emerge, or, alternatively, if categorical accentuation can be obtained in conditions more akin to Tajfel and Wilkes’s original paradigm. We hypothesized that categorical accentuation has the potential to emerge in unidimensional physical estimates (and given the simple pairing of categorical labels to stimuli), but that it will more likely do so given relatively high levels of uncertainty in the judgment task. In making this prediction, we relied on Tajfel and Wilkes’s theoretical framework, in which the authors noted that “the class identification of a stimulus provides a supplementary source of information about the relationship of its magnitude with the magnitude of other stimuli” (Tajfel & Wilkes, 1963, p. 103). We assumed that participants would be more likely to rely on such a secondary source of information when experiencing uncertainty in the judgment task. Indeed, categorical labels may help them overcome their uncertainty regarding estimates. This argument is compatible with several studies showing that in conditions of subjective uncertainty, people preferably use categorical information to define themselves and others
VOL. 13, NO. 4, JULY 2002
380
Copyright © 2002 American Psychological Society
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