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Three studies investigated whether traits are ideal-based and goal-derived social categories. In Study 1 the prototypicality of a sample of 120 act descriptions was rated for 40 traits, and stimulus persons who purportedly had performed some of the activities were judged on corresponding scales. In Study 2 judges rated the semantic similarities among the trait terms and the coordinates of the acts and traits on five dimensions of an assumed common semantic space
Peter Borkenau (Thu,) studied this question.