Skip to main content icon/video/no-internet
icon backReturn to Entries

Categorization, Psychological Perspectives

Categories are classes of items that are treated as equivalent with respect to some purpose. We have categories for such diverse items as cars, cheeses, dogs, football games, mothers, and religions. Categories do not simply group items, they provide a crucial way by which we can organize and make use of our experience. We do not need experience with a specific car to drive it or a specific dog to decide whether we can pet it or not. Categorization refers to the set of processes that are involved in putting items into classes and accessing knowledge about the class. It is a central cognitive activity in that it provides a means for going from an observed (or thought about) item to knowledge that is relevant for dealing with that item. It is a remarkable, often effortless, ability that helps our survival. This entry provides an overview of categorization with an emphasis on its various functions and its importance across a wide variety of cognitive activities.

Functions of Categories

Categories allow one both to determine the type of thing one is dealing with and to access knowledge that might be relevant to how to deal with it. Classification, the process of assigning category membership, is clearly a very important function of categories. We need to know if the item is a hammer or a rattlesnake. However, classification is rarely the goal. Rather, we use the classification to appropriately deal with the item. If it is a hammer, we can use it for some purpose, such as putting in a nail or as a paperweight, whereas if it is a rattlesnake, our knowledge suggests moving away.

These other functions beyond classification include just about all cognitive processes, but it is useful to highlight four in particular: prediction/inference, understanding/explanation, reasoning, and communication. First, when we know what category an item is in, we can make some inference about a property or prediction about the future that in turn may affect our plans and actions. Is this dog likely to harm us? Will it make noise? We can use our knowledge about dogs to make more accurate inferences and predictions. Second, we can use knowledge about categories to understand or explain events. Our knowledge about dogs helps us understand why it might be barking and explain why it jumped all over the child who just ate dinner. Third, we can reason about categories based on their knowledge and relation to other categories. If we know a dog is a mammal, we can reason that it is warm-blooded even if we never thought about that before. Fourth, to the extent that people have similar categories, we can communicate with others and learn indirectly about categories. Our knowledge of rattlesnakes, for many of us, is all learned through communication, and we can pass this information to others without the need for them to experience a live rattlesnake.

Categorical Knowledge for Classification

A central question is how knowledge about categories is organized to support these various functions. Much of the work has focused on structure supporting classification, and we examine the major classification views, similarity-based and theory-based, before broadening the discussion to consider other aspects of categorization.

...

  • Loading...
locked icon

Sign in to access this content

Get a 30 day FREE TRIAL

  • Watch videos from a variety of sources bringing classroom topics to life
  • Read modern, diverse business cases
  • Explore hundreds of books and reference titles

Read next

More like this

Sage Recommends

We found other relevant content for you on other Sage platforms.

close

Have you created a personal profile? Login or create a profile so that you can save clips, playlists and searches

close
close
close Signed In to profile You are signed in as:
close
Logged in Institution Institution