Influence of Implicit Beliefs and Visual Working Memory on Label Use

Influence of Implicit Beliefs and Visual Working Memory on Label Use Amanda Hahn (achahn30@gmail.com) Takashi Yamauchi (tya@psyc.tamu.edu) Na-Yung Yu (nayungyu@gmail.com) Department of Psychology, Mail Stop 4235 Texas AM Reasoning; Decision Making; Labeling; Visual Working Memory; Implicit Beliefs Introduction When introduced to novel items, people use cues in order to assimilate those items into previously formed categories. We categorize items in a variety of ways: such as living or non-living, color and shape, or by how the item is used. When categorizing, language plays a key role through labeling because labels are one of the indicators people use to make categorical decisions and generalizations. For example, by knowing an object is called ―oven‖, we make assumptions about the object (e.g. it is used for cooking or crafts, it has a timer, etc.) Likewise, labeling people as ―Hispanic‖ or ―feminist‖ leads others to make generalizations about them, sometimes faulty ones. However, not everyone influenced by labels to the same degree. What influences some people to use labels to judge and generalize more than others? Previous studies have focused on label use itself, finding that participants tend to judge dissimilar looking pictures as more similar when the two pictures have the same label. Furthermore, labels have been shown to have an influence on several types of decisions. For example, children believe that the name of an animal will not change even if its surface features change to make it appear like another animal (Rips, 1989). The effect of labels goes beyond the superficial as category labels have been one factor that represents people‘s inner beliefs. Research shows that category membership, especially when it is denoted by verbal labels, influences the way people perceive attributes of stimuli (Goldstone, 1994, 1995; Livingston, Andrews, & Harnad, 1998; Yamauchi & Yu, 2008; Yamauchi, Kohn, & Yu, 2007). The category membership also affects subjects‘ perceptions of similarity between images (Yu, Yamauchi, & Schumacher, 2008; Yu & Yamauchi, 2008). One source of labeling‘s power is that people believe surface features are representative of deeper properties of an item and that these properties are stable and innate (Medin & Ortony, 1989; Gelman, Heyman & Legare, 2007). In this regard, previous research has suggested that labels not only represent categorical membership (Yamauchi & Yu, 2008) but also evoke innate qualities of items, such differentiating between animate or inanimate objects (Yu et al., 2008). These research findings suggest that category labels are a part of people‘s assumptions. However, individuals have been shown to possess different belief systems which hold varying assumptions. Although there has been extensive research on how different types of labels influence decisions, there has been little illumination on how these individual differences and beliefs affect the tendency to rely on labels when making categorical and similarity judgments. Social cognition studies show that there are individual differences regarding how a person views the world in terms of the rigidity (fixed/rigid theory) or malleability of traits (flexible/entity theory) (Dweck, Chiu, & Hong, 1995). How these systems influence an individual‘s use of labels is unclear. We believe the extent to which a person believes that features and properties are unchanging and that those features are reflective of deep, innate properties will likely affect a person‘s tendency to view a label as a representation of the similarity between items. Although the effect of labels is very strong, the effect is not absolute. Some people disregard labels and instead focus on physical appearance when making judgments. One influential factor may be an individual‘s visual working memory (VWM) span. Studies have shown that individuals differ in the ability to process visual information (Palmer, 1990; Luck & Vogel, 1997). This capacity for visual information can be measured by a visual working memory span task (Luck & Vogel, 1997). Research on working memory suggests that there are different systems for verbal and visual working memory and that the two interact (Baddeley, 1992; Morey & Cowan, 2004). Furthermore, identifying labels is interrupted by processing visual information at the same time as shown in task such as the Stroop Test (Stroop 1935). Thus, we suggest that having larger visual working memory can result in less use of