Categorization simultaneously enables and impoverishes human perception and judgment.

Evidence

Categorization is a prerequisite for human thinking for it gives meaning to new experiences. It also facilitates learning and guides people’s adjustments to the social world. By abstracting sensory inputs, categorization allows individuals to quickly interpret, and react to, their environment. The act of categorization, however, deprives people of the ability to perceive some aspects of the world: stimuli can be assimilated to the category only if their peculiarities are overlooked. Here resides the dual nature of categorization: “Categorical thinking is a natural and inevitable tendency of the human mind” and “has property of guiding daily adjustments” (Allport, 1954/ 1979, pp.170–1), but it also impoverishes experiences and leads to a host of perceptual, judgmental, and memory biases. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 1154

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The paradoxical claim that the same mechanism that makes thought possible systematically distorts perception is dense and generative.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s prior reading on how forms of representation and communication shape and limit what can be known. — connects to: Classification enables thought but does not itself constitute understanding.; Genuinely new phenomena resist recognition because people interpret them through familiar categories — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 48