CATEGORIZATION OF INDIVIDUALS ON THE BASIS OF MULTIPLE SOCIAL FEATURES

Five experiments used a name-matching paradigm developed by Taylor, Fiske, Etcoff, and Ruderman (1978) to investigate how people use the immediately apparent features of others as a basis of social categorization. Ss were more likely to categorize targets according to their sex than their race but also tended to categorize using a single subordinate category that represented sex and race simultaneously. Racially prejudiced subjects categorized to a greater degree by race than did non-prejudiced subjects, but manipulations of construct accessibility and processing goals did not influence categorization by race or sex. Processing goals did influence the use of clothing style as a categorization feature. Results are discussed in terms of the functional utility of person features as a basis of categorization and the effects of categorization on social stereotyping and prejudice.