Expecting the Unexpected: An Explanation of Category Width?

Abstract

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.