Categorization in the media

Categorization, the process by which distinct entities are treated as equivalent, is one of the most fundamental and pervasive cognitive activities. It is fundamental because categorization allows us to understand and make predictions about objects and events in our world. The problem of understanding what criteria are used to group together entities in the same category is indeed central in categorization. Though most works on this topic have proposed that perceptual or structural similarity is the "glue" that binds objects of a same category, some psychologists have claimed that similarity is insufficient to account for the acquisition and use of categories and have proposed more abstract forms of criteria that make categories coherent and give them a kind of homogeneity in terms of the entities that belong to them.
The purpose of this study was to explore Caucasian viewers' identification and misidentification of criminals featured in a newscast. Based on prior research in so...