ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the effects of each type of evidence separately and provides a basis for conceptualizing the processes underlying these effects and for identifying the factors that affect them. It examines the manner in which the different types of evidence combine to affect the acceptance of generalizations and discusses the implications of the data for research and theory on social inference processes. The homogeneity of a category may also affect the universality of the implicit quantifiers assigned to it in the generalization being evaluated. The analysis suggests that the effect of deductive evidence on the acceptance of generalization is likely to depend upon the type of category to which the evidence is specific. The effects of information on the acceptance of generalizations are obviously complex. Information about an actor’s behavior toward an object may affect judgments of the actor, the object, and the situation in which the behavior occurs.
