People and objects can belong to multiple overlapping categories. For instance, a person may be a feminist, a librarian, and a mother. Some information, however, may seem more relevant to one category than to another. For instance, finding out that this person participated in a woman's rights march may cause us to activate and update our category for feminist, but to ignore our categories for librarians and mothers. Thus, not all categories in memory may be activated and updated with new information. But failing to update all possible categories with the new information may reinforce stereotypical beliefs (feminists participate in Women's rights movements) and suppress other possible beliefs (librarians participate in Women's rights movements). The purpose of the proposed research is to investigate how new information about an entity is understood when the entity is a member of multiple overlapping categories. To date, many studies have examined how new information interpreted when only one category is appropriate. Little is known, however, about how information is interpreted when multiple overlapping categories apply. The proposed studies aim to increase understanding of how category representations are accessed, updated, and used when more than one categorization is possible or appropriate. The results of this work, therefore, will make a theoretical contribution by increasing our understanding of the categorization process. The work will also make a practical contribution by providing important information about how biased beliefs, such as stereotypical beliefs, are developed and sustained.
