Cognitive Categorization Analysis

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Pages: 6

Cognitive Categorization: A Problematic Approach We Use to Organize Our Environment Categorization is a basic human process that enables us to simplify our environment into a manageable amount of information we can understand (Reed, p.180, 2013). According to the textbook, the structure of natural categories correlates with how we classify people (Reed, p.193, 2013). With so much incoming stimulus information, it would be impossible to process all the information objectively. To aid us in our effort to understand our environment, we use tactics such as hierarchical organization in order to simplify all of this incoming information (Reed, p.184, 2013).
Furthermore, hierarchical organization consists of organizing objects into groups based on
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During high school, I went to a predominantly Caucasian school and was constantly ridiculed for being a different ethnicity than the majority of the students. I never fit in, because I had a group membership to a minority group and didn’t physically resemble the prototype of a student at that school. Negative assumptions were made about me, my personality, my native language, my family’s income and other contents of my life, because of my group membership to Hispanics. These assumptions were based off of what the students’ thought a Hispanic American was and what it meant to have membership to this …show more content…
Basically, the students saw me and organized me into the subordinate group of Hispanics. Accordingly, I received the characteristics they associated with that group; even though these kids were educated and knew about the process of creating negative stereotypes, it still didn’t stop them; this behavior only ceased when they got to know me closely and realized that I did not fit these stereotypes. I demonstrated to them how hard I worked in order to not comply with these negative characteristics and taught them that not all Hispanics are how they think. Similar to what the study discovered, showing people I did not fit the stereotypical behavior of my group was better at reducing stereotyping, than teaching them about the cognitive process of stereotyping