Premium
The effect of cognitive load on social categorization in the category confusion paradigm
Author(s) -
Spears Russell,
Haslam S. Alexander,
Jansen Ruurd
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
european journal of social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.609
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1099-0992
pISSN - 0046-2772
DOI - 10.1002/(sici)1099-0992(199908/09)29:5/6<621::aid-ejsp969>3.0.co;2-w
Subject(s) - categorization , psychology , confusion , cognition , contrast (vision) , cognitive psychology , recall , set (abstract data type) , cognitive load , pace , social category , social cognition , social psychology , artificial intelligence , computer science , geodesy , neuroscience , psychoanalysis , programming language , geography
The category confusion paradigm (Taylor, Fiske, Etcoff & Ruderman, 1978) was used to examine the relationship between cognitive load and the extent of social categorization. The original prediction made by Taylor et al. (1978; Experiment 2) and inferences from the cognitive miser model suggest that categorization should increase or be unaffected by cognitive load. In contrast, it is argued that social categorization can be an effortful and resource‐consuming process, especially where the representation of multiple stimuli are concerned. This leads to the prediction that social categorization should decrease with load—assuming there is enough load to produce recall errors in the first place. We obtained results consistent with this analysis in paradigms which manipulated load by means of set‐size (Study 1) and processing pace (Study 2). Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.