IN WHOM WE TRUST (Williams, 2001, AMR)

SOCIAL GROUP MEMBERSHIP AND CATEGORIZATION

1. Social categorization and self-categorization (Tajfel & Turner, 1986; Turner, 1987) are the primary psychological mechanisms through which group membership influences trust development. Social categorization refers to the process of grouping oneself or others into a social category in contrast to another, such as by gender, race, or profession (Turner, 1987).

2. Social categorization influences trust development through category-driven processing (i.e., stereotyping), a
cognitive shortcut that allows people to rely on previously held beliefs rather than incoming information about specific group members (Hilton & von Hippel, 1996).

3. Aiter categorizing someone, an individual's impression formation and judgments may be driven by this initial categorization process (i.e., category driven) or may be influenced by individuating information (e.g., personal appearance, past behavior, other category memberships).

4. Category-driven processing is a default processing strategy that is highly likely to occur when an individual is under time pressure, cognitively busy with other tasks, or not particularly motivated to make accurate impressions (Fiske
& Taylor, 1991). For instance, "when an individual is distracted or attending to cues in the situation other than group membership, behaviors reflecting aversion or fear of out-group members are more likely to appear" (Brewer & Brown,
1998: 575)

5. Category-driven processing requires a high degree of perceived "fit" or overlap between an individual's attributes and the characteristics associated with a category (Fiske & Taylor, 1991).

6. When people expend the time and energy necessary to notice that others do not fit a category well, they usually attempt to recategorize the person into a subcategory (Fiske & Neuberg, 1990).

7. A subcategory is influenced by the information in the initial category selected but also includes exceptional features that replace or append some of the original information (Fiske & Neuberg, 1990). For example, subcategorization has occurred when a person who was initially categorized as Latino is recategorized into the subcategory Latino-engineer—a subcategory likely to have information about mathematical expertise not found in the original category.