Before revision:   We test the model's prediction using US political survey data on how political independents are perceived by registered party members , as well as existing experiments on the perception of racially ambiguous faces, and find support . Our model suggests that inbetweeners can arise as the result of both groups drawing a more restrictive boundary than the middle of the spectrum, motivated by improving categorization accuracy alone. The model prediction is general and may be extended to social categorization along many other attributes .
After revision:  We test the model's prediction using US political survey data on how political independents are perceived by registered party members , as well as existing experiments on the perception of racially ambiguous faces, and find support .