Monopolistic categories make all group members interchangeable under least-effort thinking

Evidence

A central idea regarding the internal characteristics of categories is that people sometimes hold “monopolistic” categories in which all category members are thought to be interchangeable. It is in this sense that people’s reliance on categories is supposedly based on the “principle of least effort”: in order to reduce at low cost the uncertainty of their social environment, perceivers treat all members of a social group as being alike. — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 1147

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Allport’s ‘monopolistic categories’ and the ‘principle of least effort’ underlying group interchangeability.
• XREF: The least-effort interchangeability account echoes the reader’s existing vault content on how categorization cheapens the processing of the social world.