社会分类的概念、线索及影响机制

Concepts,Cues and Influential Mechanisms of Social Categorization

作为社会认知的基本过程和重要途径,社会分类对预测刻板印象和群际感知、减少多元文化群体中的关系冲突、促进推理与决策以及指导社会关系推断等都有重要作用。人们进行社会分类的线索可以概括为明显线索和模糊线索、自然线索和社会线索以及静态线索和动态线索。社会分类会受到分类对象、情境和感知者等的作用,同时对人们认知、情绪、情感和行为等产生一系列影响。未来可以基于跨文化和发展视角探讨社会分类的线索偏向、潜在机制及立足本土文化检验社会分类的影响及干预策略。

As a basic process and an important way of social cognition,social categorization is the subjective process of dividing others into different groups based on shared similarity.It is also the focus of current research fields such as cognitive psychology and social psychology.Social categorization organizes the rich knowledge about human attributes and the complex network of human social life and plays a critical role in understanding the self in the interpersonal group,giving meaning and reducing uncertainty,predicting stereotypes and intergroup perception,as well as promoting reasoning and decision-making to guide the inference of social relations.In general,people often rely on various types of cues for social categorization,which can be summarized as obvious cues vs.ambiguous cues,natural/physiological cues vs.social cues,and static cues vs.dynamic cues.Specifically,people usually classify others based on some relatively stable and immutable obvious cues such as face shape and skin color.The process is automatic and unconscious.In addition to obvious visual cues,some cues that are relatively vague(such as sexual orientation,religious belief)are also important basis for social categorization.Gender,race and age are called the'Big Three'category and are important natural cues for social categorization.In addition to natural cues,people also classify others according to social cues such as professional roles and status.Static cues such as resumes,archives and other text information also serve as an important basis for social categorization.In addition to static cues,dynamic cues including facial expression and voice tones in interpersonal interaction are also important references for social categorization.Social categorization is affected by a series of social cognitive factors such as the objects classified,context and perceivers.For example,the factors of objects such as the different types of categories(single or multidimensional),the accessibility and salience of categories,the factors of context such as the different cultural backgrounds,living conditions,cooperation and competitive context,and the factors of perceivers such as experience,motivations,intentions,collective memories and identity changes have an impact on social categorization.Furthermore,in most situations,social categorization is a rapid,efficient and spontaneous process,so the underlying psychological mechanisms of social categorization are diverse and complex.In general,the need for structure,certainty and group identity are important mechanisms of social categorization.Moreover,social categorization is of profound implication to the perception,memory and information coding of interpersonal interaction.However,social categorization produces a series of negative effects on people’s psychology and behavior.For example,cognitive bias such as stereotypes,emotional recognition,prejudice and behavior inferences are influenced by social categorization.Finally,it will become the main direction of future research to explore the social category preferences based on the cross-cultural and development perspectives,to explore potential mechanisms,and to examine the influences of social categorization and the intervention strategies based on the local cultural research.