Categorizing people into groups minimizes perceived within-group differences

Evidence

When people or objects are categorized into groups, actual differences between members of the same category tend to be perceptually minimized (Tajfel, 1969) and often ignored in making decisions or forming impressions. Members of the same category seem to be more similar than they actually are, and more similar than they were before they were categorized together (see Judd & Park, ch. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 550

As Allport cautioned, social categorization is not a simple, static process. When people or objects are categorized into groups, actual differences between members of the same category tend to be perceptually minimized (Tajfel, 1969) and often ignored in making decisions or forming impressions. Members of the same category seem to be more similar than they actually are, and more similar than they were before they were categorized together (see Judd & Park, ch. 8 this volume). In addition, although members of a social category may be different in some ways from members of other categories, these differences tend to become exaggerated and overgeneralized. For social categorization, this process becomes more ominous because these withinand between-group distortions, as Allport noted, have a tendency to generalize to additional dimensions (e.g., character traits) beyond those that differentiated the categories originally. — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 550

Categorization

• DEFINE: Describes the perceptual accentuation effect,
• XREF: Directly grounds the vault’s existing contact-theory and social-categorization claims; the assimilation/contrast distortions precede and enable the prejudice that contact theory tries to reduce. — connects to: Distinguishing identification dimensions improves prediction of intergroup outcomes — Sonia Roccas and Yechiel Klar and Ido Liviatan, The Paradox of Group-Based Guilt: Modes…, 143; Merely categorizing people into us and them generates in-group favoritism and out-group devaluation; Security registration programs racialize groups by concretizing essentialized categories (+2 more)
• corroborated: 4 independent passages support this claim — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice: Fifty Years…, 550; , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 550