Does Personal Comfort Justify Our Use Of Categories?

Campaigns

Please donate to the Maetreum of Cybele.

The Maetreum of Cybele needs your help in their fight for religious freedom.

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA, H.R. 3261) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA, S. 968) would devastate the online economy and overall web freedom, including sites with user generated content.

For information, visit the SOPA Blackout site and read An open letter to Washington from tech industry leaders.

Petition: remove women of transsexual / intersex history from the GLAAD Media Reference Guide. [ sign ]
Read: Andrea Rosenfield's call for reform.

Opening Doors to Transsexual Medical Research

TS-Si supports open access to publicly funded research.

TS-Si supports open and immediate access to publicly funded research.

xkcd

Wrong Superhero

Baby Names

TS-Si

is dedicated to the acceptance, medical
treatment, and legal
protection of individuals correcting the misalignment
of their brains and their anatomical sex, while supporting their transition
into society as hormonally reconstituted and surgically corrected citizens.

Does Personal Comfort Justify Our Use Of Categories?

Living - Society

TS-Si News Service

Sunday, 20 July 2008 17:00

TS-Si Living

What Real Relationship Commitment Means

Los Angeles, CA, USA. A truly deep level of commitment is a much better predictor of lower divorce rates and fewer problems in marriage, but what does being committed to your marriage really mean? UCLA psychologists develope...

Washington, DC, USA. A report released by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute finds that the K-12 science standards of most states remain mediocre to failing, questioning the viability of America’s scientific leadership, techno...

London, United Kingdom. Women understand how testosterone affects behavior but the lack of hard scientific data relegates female insights to the social margins, a situation subject to change as scientific interest has ramped ...

Indianapolis, IN, USA. Law enforcement officials say the parties leading up to football’s biggest game attract human traffickers who coerce adults and children into prostitution. Although some doubt there is a link between...

Chicago, IL, USA. As human beings, we use categories to organize the details of a complex world. We experience a certain comfort in the convenience and predictability of categories. That seems to work until somone else comes along with their own category for us that we don't like. Well, the other person got it wrong: we don't fit into that category, or do we?

Is it possible that comfort alone is a justification for categorization? Out in the real world of daily choices, most of us have stood in a supermarket aisle, overwhelmed with the array of choices. New research suggests those choices are easier if the options are categorized.

The findings appear in the Journal of Consumer Research (JCR). The authors demonstrate an interesting phenomenon called the “mere categorization effect,” where consumers are happier with their choices if their options are categorized, even if the categories are meaningless.

Authors Cassie Mogilner (Stanford University), Tamar Rudnick, and Sheena S. Iyengar (both from Columbia University) say that “People confronted with highly categorized large selections are happier with their decisions because they experience a sense of self-determination as a result of perceiving differences among the available options.”

In one study, participants chose magazines from different displays, some that were categorized and some that were not. Those who were asked to choose a magazine they weren’t familiar with tended to be more satisfied with their choices if they came from categorized selections.
In another study, people at a food court were randomly selected to choose coffee from several menus. The coffee options were either categorized or uncategorized. “Consumers who chose a coffee flavor from a menu divided into seemingly meaningless categories such as Categories A, B, and C were just as happy as those who chose from meaningful categories such as ‘Mild,’ ‘Dark Roast,’ and ‘Nutty.’”

When participants were already quite familiar with the items they were selecting, they didn’t need to rely on categories to pick what they wanted, and were less susceptible to the mere categorization effect, the authors found.

“Although it is assumed the size of a selection is more important to the consumer than the number of categories, the findings of this investigation reveal the opposite to be true,” write the authors.

“Categorization can benefit retailers by providing them with an alternative to stocking additional volumes of goods. Categorization can also alleviate marketers’ and consumers’ desire for ever-increasing choices by enabling consumers to discover variety, experience self-determination, and obtain satisfaction simply by highlighting the variety already available.”

The US National Science Foundation (NSF) and Time Distribution Services contributed funds and resources for the studies in this investigation.

Afiliations. Cassie Mogilner: marketing PhD candidate at Stanford University, Graduate School of Business; Tamar Rudnick: research assistant at Columbia University, Graduate School of Business; Sheena Iyengar: professor of management, Columbia University, Graduate School of Business.

The Mere Categorization Effect: How the Presence of Categories Increases Choosers’ Perceptions of Assortment Variety and Outcome Satisfaction. Cassie Mogilner, Tamar Rudnick, and Sheena S. Iyengar. Journal of Consumer Research. August 2008. Vol. 35. doi: 10.1086 / 588698. ISSN: 0093-5301/2008/3502-0002.

Abstract

What is the effect of option categorization on choosers' satisfaction? A combination of field and laboratory experiments reveals that the mere presence of categories, irrespective of their content, positively influences the satisfaction of choosers who are unfamiliar with the choice domain. This “mere categorization effect” is driven by a greater number of categories signaling greater variety among the available options, which allows for a sense of self-determination from choosing. This effect, however, is attenuated for choosers who are familiar with the choice domain, who do not rely on the presence of categories to perceive the variety available.

The TS-Si News Service is a collaborative effort by TS-Si.org editors, contributors, and corresponding institutions. The sources can include the cited individuals and organizations, as well as TS-Si.org staff contributions. Articles and news reports do not necessarily convey official positions of TS-Si, its partners, or affiliates.

We welcome your comments. Use the form below to leave a public comment or send private correspondence via the TS-Si Contact Page. We will not divulge any personal details or place you on a mailing list without your permission.

TS-Si is dedicated to the acceptance, medical treatment, and legal protection of individuals correcting the misalignment of their brains and their anatomical sex, while supporting their transition into society as hormonally reconstituted and surgically corrected citizens.

Email this

Comments (0) Add Comment

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Show/hide comments

Write comment

Show/hide comment form

< Prev		Next >

Last Updated on Sunday, 20 July 2008 17:38

TS-Siis dedicated to the acceptance, legal protection, and medical treatment of individuals correcting the misalignment of their brains and their anatomical sex, while supporting their transition into society as hormonally reconstituted and surgically corrected citizens.

We welcome responsible comments. Use the public article forms throughout this site or send private correspondence via the TS-Si Contact Page. We will not divulge personal details or place you on a mailing list without your permission.

The TS-Si News Service and the TS-Si Research Service are collaborations of TS-Si officials, staff, contributors, and corresponding institutions. The contents do not necessarily convey official positions of TS-Si or its owners, participants, partners, or affiliates.

Except as explicitly noted in specific cases, works on this TS-Si.org website are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License. Copyright © 2005-2011 TS-Si, Inc. Some rights reserved.