THE INTERNAL STRUCTURE OF SOCIAL CATEGORIES - COMPONENTS AND PREDICTORS

The influence of group membership on the utility of family resemblance and frequency of occurrence as predictors of similarity, typicality, and likelihood of membership in social categories was investigated. Fr equency of occurrence and family resemblance were useful predictors of category structure, but die utility of each predictor varied with cat egory knowledge. Family resemblance was equivalent to or better than f requency of occurrence as a predictor of category structure when categ ory knowledge was high, but frequency of occurrence was the best predi ctor when category knowledge was low. Although the results provided so me evidence of an outgroup homogeneity effect, they did not support th e notion that fluctuations in the utility of predictors are due to gro up membership. The results suggest that the predictive utility of fami ly resemblance may vary depending on whether category knowledge was de rived directly or indirectly.