ABSTRACT
Categorization-dividing the world into groups of things-is one of the core mechanisms behind many cognitive abilities. Categorization enables people to cope with the otherwise overwhelming complexity of objects and situations by reducing information. It also allows people to generate predictions by generalizing what they already know to novel situations. For example, if you meet, say, a new doctor, you can make certain inferences about how they will act based on what you already know about the category “doctor.” As two situations are rarely (if ever) identical such an ability seems essential to everyday life. On the other hand, overgeneralization can be problematic. For example, it might be useful to have a “cat” category that covers both your own pet and other similar animals. It would, however, be potentially disastrous if you generalized what you knew about this category to the first lion you met.
