The category confusion paradigm (Taylor, Fiske, Etcoff & Ruderman, 1978) wa
s 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 fond. In contr
ast, it is argued that social categorization can be an effortful and resour
ce-consuming process, especially, where the representation of multiple stim
uli are concerned. This leads to the prediction that social categorization
should decrease with load-assuming there is enough load to produce recall e
r rows in the first place. We obtained results consistent with this analysi
s in paradigms which manipulated load by means of set-size (Study I) and pr
ocessing pace (Study 2). Copyright (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.