ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the effects of world view categories on judgments. It begins with an examination of two judgment phases, the "nominal" and "ordinal" decisions, and proceeds to a review of findings concerning the effects of context on judgment. The perceiver also makes an ordinal judgment by deciding how typical a member of the category the object is in order to use the information locked in the category to predict the object's behavior. In instances in which there is a high degree of category overlap and/or substantial variability within a category, attributes will be added up to make judgments. The ordinal judgment task involves a determination of how typical or "good" the judged object is as an example of the category. Specific hypotheses concerning the patterns and political judgments will be offered. The psychological studies also suggest some interesting patterns concerning the problems policy-makers will have in adapting to change in another country given the role categories play in judgments.
