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

[Kevin Smith]

Back in 1990, things were almost always put in hierarchical taxonomies. The
idea of "tags" and non-hierarchical categories wasn't really a thing,
partly due to limitations of technology. The Dewey Decimal System (for
books) and biological taxonomies ruled the day. And it was really
frustrating, because so many things really can't fit into a single bucket.
Even today, it seems like rigid taxonomies remain overused.

I'm not sure where I'm going with that, but it seemed relevant somehow, and
I needed to rant.



Kevin Smith
Agile Coach, Wikimedia Foundation


On Thu, Jun 9, 2016 at 1:48 PM, Grace Gellerman <ggellerman at wikimedia.org>
wrote:

>
>
> 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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