Pettigrew's (1958) construct of category width has been an enigma for the past three decades. His scale is highly reliable and appears to have good construct validity, but relationships with other variables are far from clear. We report a serendipitous finding which relates a new construct of neophilia (openness to novel information) to category width. The empirical results are promising and a conceptual argument is made that neophilia may help integrate some literature on category width.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
FarleyF. H.PetersonJ. M.WhalenT. J. (1974) The stimulus-seeking motive: relationship to conceptual category breadth. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 3, 449–451.
2.
GibbinsK. (1968) Response sets and the semantic differential. British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 7, 253–263.
3.
KoganN.WallachM. A. (1964) Risk taking: a study in cognition and personality. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
4.
MurdochP. (1969) Effects of perspective and payment on reference scale formation. Journal of Experimental Research in Personality, 3, 301–310.
5.
PettigrewT. F. (1958) The measurement and correlates of category width as a cognitive variable. Journal of Personality, 26, 532–544.
6.
PettigrewT. F. (1982) Cognitive style and social behavior: a review of category width. In WheelerL. (Ed), Review of personality and social psychology. Vol. 3.Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Pp. 199–223.
7.
SilvermanJ. (1964) Scanning-control mechanisms and “cognitive filtering” in paranoid and non-paranoid schizophrenia. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 28, 385–393.
8.
ZuckermanM. (1978) Sensation seeking. In LondonH.ExnerJ. (Eds.), Dimensions of personality. New York: Wiley. Pp. 487–559.
