Category-based induction.

TLDR

Categorical arguments have premises and conclusions of the form “All members of C have property F,” and belief in their premises tends to strengthen belief in the conclusion, as illustrated by examples such as “All bears love onions.” The study examines a subclass of categorical arguments, hypothesizing that their strength increases with similarity between premise categories and the conclusion category, and with similarity to the lowest common category. A model based on this hypothesis explains 13 qualitative phenomena and reproduces quantitative results from several experiments.

Abstract

An argument is categorical if its premises and conclusion are of the form All members ofC have property F, where C is a natural category like FALCON or BIRD, and P remains the same across premises and conclusion. An example is Grizzly bears love onions. Therefore, all bears love onions. Such an argument is psychologically strong to the extent that belief in its premises engenders belief in its conclusion. A subclass of categorical arguments is examined, and the following hypothesis is advanced: The strength of a categorical argument increases with (a) the degree to which the premise categories are similar to the conclusion category and (b) the degree to which the premise categories are similar to members of the lowest level category that includes both the premise and the conclusion categories. A model based on this hypothesis accounts for 13 qualitative phenomena and the quantitative results of several experiments.