The concepts of typological thinking bring up an interesting diversion regarding our own curiousity about human thought. The field of animal behavior has a peculiar recursive quality to it. We attempt to study how animals think, perhaps to gain a better idea of what makes us think. The field is recursive, in that we are thinking about the mechanisms of thinking. The study of behavior is one of the most interesting of the sciences because it addresses issues related to the origin and mechanisms of human thought and cognition (my own biased opinion).
Cognitive processes of humans and other animals may be structured in a way that is conducive to a form of stereotyping. While such sterotyping allows us to remember and order objects in the world around us, it may limit our ability to remember the subtle differences among objects. By categorizing objects and other organisms into types and sub-types, we would require less information to remember salient features that define a group of things. Rather than remember each and every object, categorizing objects in this manner takes advantage of the relationship among objects. Data storage mechanisms in the field of computing which use this kind of hieracrchical relational storage are referred to as relational databases. This contrasts with an encyclopedic knowledge in which lots of detail is stored, but the relationships among objects are not used during information retrival.
Sub-typing and typing in a relational style database would allow for efficient information retrieval. If a "label" is used as a handle to pull information out of long-term memory, fewer labels would be needed in the first round of information retrieval in a relational database. This model of information retrieval in human cognition and artifical intelligence is now being applied to more efficient algorithims that allow computers to rapidly sort and sift through vast amounts of data. In contrast, shifting through the information in a non-relational database is very slow. Rapid access to memory should have adaptive value under most circumstances in which a reaction to a current environmental condition requires information from past events (e.g., foraging).
Outside of an adaptive consideration of such cognitive processes, do we have personal experiences with stereotyping? We engage in stereotyping all the time. Moreover, stereotyping appears to have a strong downside in terms of our modern society. Many people apply stereotypes to racial and ethnic groups,in most cases having a definite negative effect on the workings of society. The application of stereotypes to one group ignores the fact that individuals are unique, exactlywhat should be recognized as important.
Are humans prone to stereotyping owing to the way our brains "are wired"? Some might argue that rooting up such questions of biological determinism which underlies human behavior might cause problems. For example, it has been argued that if we are predisposed to certain behaviors because of biological causes, then we are not necessarily responsible for our actions. Elucidating such societal interpretations of human "free will" is not the aim of research on animal behavior. Such research gets at the cause of behavior and is an explanation for the way the world works. These questions explore the biological basis of our own species and this example is meant to illustrate how such study might indeed have power in explaining behavior patterns in our own species. Nevertheless, because behavior forms the foundation of human society and culture, the study of Animal Behavior has been, and will always be controversial. It is a subject that explores many "loaded questions" of biology. We will return to these issues in chapters on cognition, societal evolution, and human evolution.
The study of animal behavior explores issues that are at the roots of why we can even ask questions about ourselves. Now this is a mind-bending concept if there ever was one. Are we constrained in how we think and has this limited the way we have developed ideas concerning our own human origins? How is it that the human brain evolved, and how does it enable us to ask questions about ourselves? Are we prone to typological thinking and does this limit our ability to grasp pattern and process in the world around us? The study of behavior and indeed the study of the brain, the source of most interesting behavior, is a field that challenges our minds to the utmost, for we use our own minds to fathom the origins of our own minds. [Don't think too hard about this one or it might start to hurt].