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Social Categorization

Definition

Social categorization refers to the way a person's mind clusters together individuals who share important characteristics. A person mentally groups people on the basis of their demographic features (e.g., sex, age, ethnicity, or religion), personality and interests (e.g., extraverts, nerds), and occupation, to name some of the most common types of social categories. This process has several important functions. It provides a person with a way to organize and structure his or her understanding of the social world. For each meaningful social category, a person is likely to have some preconceptions about what members of the category are like. Rather than having to start from scratch in figuring other people out, a person often identifies the groups they belong to and then makes some starting assumptions about their characteristics, given these group memberships. If you learn that your new nextdoor neighbor is a lawyer, for example, you can start to form an impression just on the basis of this category membership.

Sometimes a person is provided with categories (as when someone tells a person his or her occupation), and sometimes a person must infer another person's category membership based on observable evidence (e.g., one can often—but not always—easily infer someone's sex or approximate age on the basis of physical appearance). Membership in some categories is based on very clear criteria (e.g., the category “college students” is defined by attending a college), but some categories are much fuzzier. There is no strict criterion for being a nerd, for example. However, a set of characteristics seems typical of nerds, resulting in a mental image, or prototype, of the category. In such a case, putting someone into the category is based more on how much the person resembles one's mental image of that category, rather than on meeting a clear set of rules about category membership. Even in the case in which there are clear criteria, resemblance to a mental image of the category may still be important. A divorced homemaker in her 50s who returns to school to get her bachelor's degree may technically be a member of the category “college students,” but perceivers may not think of her as a member of the category because she does not match the common prototype of the category.

Context and Importance

Whether discussing people, objects, or events, categories are essential for mental functioning. Without them, people would not be able to make sense of the complex, multifaceted environment around them. By grouping similar items into categories, the world acquires structure and meaningfulness. This process of organizing and structuring the world into categories involves two related processes. First, when thinking about people who belong in a particular category, one mentally emphasizes their shared characteristics while minimizing their differences or unique individual characteristics. When one thinks of the category “nerds,” one thinks about the characteristics that are common to members of the category. Second, one also accentuates, or emphasizes, differences between different categories. When a person thinks of nerds, he or she thinks of the ways nerds are different from other comparable kinds of people (such as jocks or artsy types).

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