Individual consistencies in categorizing: a study of judgmental behavior.

The article comments on the study of individual differences in cognitive styles. The investigation into the generality of a cognitive style can proceed in a number of directions. One research strategy, risky but holding the promise of the more interesting results, is to extend this generality as far as it will reach through demonstrating it in a large variety of apparently unrelated aspects of cognitive functioning. The present article is concerned with such an exploration of one cognitive variable. This variable has been referred to in a number of ways by various authors, equivalence range, category width or breadth of category, coarseness and fineness of category, etc. The differences between the studies are not, however, confined to terminology. It is not the purpose of this paper to review these studies or to decide which is the proper way to measure individual consistencies in categorizing, this is, at any rate, likely to remain a sterile question. This brief enumeration points, however, to one of the possible reasons for the inconsistencies of the findings and for the low relationships often obtained between performances on the various tasks.