Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

In everyday learning, people often receive conflicting information from different sources. What factors determine whichsources influence learning? In this study, we consider whether social characteristics of a source, such as attractivenessand gender, affect belief-updating in a simple category learning task. Participants sorted novel stimuli into two categories.After establishing an initial category boundary, two companions were introduced from whom categorization advice wasreceived. These sources did not always agree, and participants were never told which of them was correct. Acrossparticipants, the gender and attractiveness of the companions was varied. After 300 trials receiving this feedback for arange of stimuli, participants category boundaries were again measuredallowing a determination of belief-shifts. For bothmale and female participants, attractiveness had a significant impact, and female sources were afforded more weight thanmales. Our results suggest that category learning can be influenced by social factors like gender and attractiveness.