Theories and Similarity: Categorization under Speeded Conditions

A largely accepted view in the categorization literature is that similarity-based reasoning is faster than theory-based reasoning. In the current study, we explored whether theorybased categorization behavior would continue to be observed when people are forced to make category decisions under time pressure. As a specific test of the theory-based view to category representation we examined the causal status hypothesis, which states that properties acting as causes are more important than properties acting as effects when categorizing an item. Subjects learned four categories of items composed of three features and learned causal relations between those features. In two experiments we found that participants gave more weight to cause features than to effect features even under rapid response conditions. We discuss implications of these findings for categorization.