Mental representation of social relationships: dimensions, laws, or categories?

The study of social relationships lies at the heart of the social sciences, but psychologists' understanding of the cognitive structures that support them remains in the hinterlands. Two studies supported the proposal that social relationships are represented by a small number of implicit categorical forms in contrast with accounts proposing dimensional representations or formally specifiable laws. Discrete forms based on 2 of Alan Fiske's (1991, 1992) relational models predicted prototypicality ratings defined over a comprehensive field of hypothetical relationships better than corresponding dimensions of communality and authority and 3 laws of complementarity and symmetry propounded by D. J. Kiesler (1983), J. S. Wiggins (1979), and G. Bateson (1979). In addition, "competition" between the orthogonal dimensions was observed, strengthening the argument for categoriality.