Q 2.

Categorization stands accused of leading us to perceive something other than

reality, of generating efficient but inaccurate interpretations of social life. Discuss

Question 2 is asking you to discuss whether social categorization is a good thing – to

weigh up the pros and cons. In order to answer this question well, you will need to:

 Get up to speed on the classic work on categorization. Lecture 4 slides and

associated readings might be a good place to start. However, although a good
place to begin, you will need to read around further, amassing as much
relevant information as you can about what is known about social
categorization.
 Familiarise yourself with all the more recent work that has been done in this
area (e.g., the debate about whether social categorization is automatic –
there is a lot on this, especially in the field of stereotype activation). Some of
this research is mentioned in Lecture 4, but is only really a starting point. And
then look harder for other work.
 Focus most closely on the work that actually looks at social categorization.
That is, be clear about how social categorization (e.g., classifying a person as
elderly) is the first step in the process when we encounter a person. What
comes next (do we USE the information this category cues, such as
stereotypic information – assuming they are slow, forgetful, averse to
risk/change etc. – to drive the judgments we make about them) is the
consequence of social categorization. So, don’t use the terms social
categorization and stereotyping interchangeably, and whilst it is OK to talk
about the consequences (because they clearly link to the question) be clear
about this distinction.
 Having read widely about the advantages and disadvantages of social
categorization for the social perceiver and the socially perceived, do you have
a sense of whether it is good or bad, or when and why it may be either? I
really want you to formulate your own structure that will enable you to
provide a convincing answer to this question.
 Additional feedback to students who attempted this as an exam question in a
previous year will also be useful to help you avoid common pitfalls. I list this
below here:

Exam feedback: This question was not done well in a lot of cases. You would be
expected to thoroughly discuss work in the field of (social) categorization in this
answer, and we covered this in the lecture entitled Social Categorization, where I
defined it, explained why it was so pervasive, and introduced examples of it.
Armed with this basic overview, you would have been in great shape to build on
this further by following up what I said, doing independent research. Then in
your answer you could have made a convincing argument about whether you felt
the empirical evidence on social categorization suggested Oakes may have a
point (or not).
What I got instead were an awful lot of essays that were on heuristics or
Asch/Anderson, or priming and social behaviour. Whilst aspects of these topics
was somewhat relevant (e.g., inflated categorization; representativeness
heuristic, priming a category impacting upon behaviour) quite a lot of what I read
was instead a standard rehearsed essay on either heuristics or impression
formation that made very little attempt to tailor material to the question that
was actually set. So a lot of you ended up with disappointing marks for this
question.

Many of the general points listed above are applicable to this question, so read
through them again. In addition:

 Remember to define key terms.

 Remember to refer to the question to show your material is directly
addressing it.
 Avoid inclusion of irrelevant material (healing one’s liver, for example).
 Be sure to go far enough when talking about what a study shows (e.g.,
Chinese categorization study shows more than category activation it also
speaks to inhibition).