A bird's eye view: biological categorization and reasoning within and across cultures.
Many psychological studies of categorization and reasoning use undergraduates to make claims about human conceptualization. Generalizability of findings to other populations is often assumed but rarely tested. Even when comparative studies are conducted, it may be challenging to interpret differences. As a partial remedy, in the present studies we adopt a 'triangulation strategy' to evaluate the ways expertise and culturally different belief systems can lead to different ways of conceptualizing the biological world. We use three groups (US bird experts, US undergraduates, and ordinary Itza' Maya) and two sets of birds (North American and Central American). Categorization tasks show considerable similarity among the three groups' taxonomic sorts, but also systematic differences. Notably, US expert categorization is more similar to Itza' than to US novice categorization. The differences are magnified on inductive reasoning tasks where only undergraduates show patterns of judgment that are largely consistent with current models of category-based taxonomic inference. The Maya commonly employ causal and ecological reasoning rather than taxonomic reasoning. Experts use a mixture of strategies (including causal and ecological reasoning), only some of which current models explain. US and Itza' informants differed markedly when reasoning about passerines (songbirds), reflecting the somewhat different role that songbirds play in the two cultures. The results call into question the importance of similarity-based notions of typicality and central tendency in natural categorization and reasoning. These findings also show that relative expertise leads to a convergence of thought that transcends cultural boundaries and shared experiences.
Bailenson
Jeremy N
JN
Research Center for Virtual Environments and Behavior, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93101-9660, USA. bailenson@psych.ucsb.edu
Shum
Michael S
MS
Atran
Scott
S
Medin
Douglas L
DL
Coley
John D
JD
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D000818:Animals; D001717:Birds / Q000145:classification*; D016000:Cluster Analysis; D003071:Cognition; D003210:Concept Formation; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D003469:Culture; D005260:Female; D005495:Folklore; D006166:Guatemala; D006801:Humans; D007199:Indians, South American; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015588:Observer Variation; D012044:Regression Analysis; D014481:United States