Inferring category characteristics from sample characteristics: inductive reasoning and social projection.

Inductive reasoning involves generalization from sample observations to categories. This research examined the conditions under which generalizations go beyond the boundaries of the sampled categories. In Experiment 1, participants sampled colored chips from urns. When categorization was not salient, participants revised their estimates of the probability of a particular color even in urns they had not sampled. As categorization became more salient, generalization became limited to the sampled urn. In Experiment 2 the salience of categorization in social induction was varied. When social categorization was not salient, participants projected their own responses to test items to members of a laboratory group even when they themselves did not belong to this group. When salience increased, projection decreased among nonmembers but not among members. In Experiment 3 these results were replicated in a field setting.

归纳推理涉及从样本观察到类别进行概括。这项研究考察了在哪些条件下概括会超出所抽样类别的界限。在实验1中，参与者从瓮中抽取彩色筹码。当分类不显著时，参与者甚至会修改他们对未抽样瓮中某种特定颜色的概率估计。随着分类变得更加显著，概括就局限于所抽样的瓮。在实验2中，社会归纳中分类的显著程度有所不同。当社会分类不显著时，参与者会将自己对测试项目的反应投射到一个实验室小组的成员身上，即使他们自己不属于这个小组。当显著程度增加时，非成员的投射减少，但成员的投射没有减少。在实验3中，这些结果在实地环境中得到了重复。