[teampractices] Good article on why we don’t like what we struggle to categorize

Thu Jun 9 20:48:22 UTC 2016

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/opinion/sunday/the-psychology-of-genre.html?mabReward=CTM&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&region=CColumn&module=Recommendation&src=rechp&WT.nav=RecEngine&_r=2

Favorite quotes from the article:

"This “categorical perception,” as it’s called, is not an innocent process:
What we think we’re looking at can alter what we actually see. More
broadly, when we put things into a category, research has found, they
actually become more alike in our minds."

“Similarity serves as a basis for the classification of objects,” wrote the
noted psychologist Amos Tversky, “but it is also influenced by the adopted
classification.” The flip side holds: Things we might have viewed as more
similar become, when placed into two distinct categories, more different."

"Categorization affects not just how we perceive things, but how we feel
about them. When we like something, we seem to want to break it down into
further categories, away from the so-called basic level"

"When we struggle to categorize something, we like it less."
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