ABSTRACT
In this paper we investigate the role of category size in category-based induction. In a series of three experiments we asked participants about the strength of inductive inferences from arbitrary subordinate categories to their superordinates. We show that people use both subordinate and superordinate category size as a cue in category-based induction (Experiments 1 & 2). However, the results of Experiment 3 show that the effect of subordinate category size is smaller when the categories are said to be similar than when said to be dissimilar. On the basis of this result we suggest that people use category size as an indication of how much uncertainty remains concerning the superordinate rather than as a means of assessing how representative the category is as a sample of the superordinate. We conclude with a discussion of possible strategies for inductive reasoning.
