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Prototype Theory

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In order to make sense of the world, human beings classify events, objects, and patterns, dividing it into endless categories. What humans categorize in the sense of psychology, according to Smith (1990), are objects that are believed to belong together (Aberra, 2014). Human beings, however, do not stop there, they form concepts. Therefore, for many decades’ researchers and cognitive psychologists alike seek to examine and explain the nature of concepts or instances and how human beings categorize them, as concepts are constituents of thoughts and in addition to categorization plays a critical role in decision making, learning, inference and memory (Ross, 2006). This much is relatively uncontroversial, but the nature of concepts and the constraints …show more content…

1); as well as aspects of categorizing concepts with reference to factors in social psychology. For example, the article titled, ‘Prototype Theory: An Alternative Concept Theory for Categorizing Sex and Gender?’ seek to explore the prototype theory to determine whether it captures the fluidity of gender and is able to accommodate transgender and queer identities. The article clearly defined the features of the category labelled ‘woman’ on the basis of sex and gender and applied the prototype theory to these concepts as it relates to the hierarchal levels of categorization. According to Fox (2011), utilizing the prototype theory as a theoretical framework for the concepts of sex and gender provides structural flexibility and inclusiveness (Fox, 2011). In addition, the “family resemblance” stabilizes both concepts enough to accommodate the variations and overlapping idealized features such that the author concluded that the prototype theory can capture the fluidity of gender and thus is able to explain why transgender and queer identities are now incorporated in the concept of gender. Needless to say, that the theory can explain a number of observations both within the field of cognitive linguistics and by extension other fields of psychology as it pertains to defining concepts and categorizing information within a

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Introduction The concept of sex and gender has been socially constructed for a very long period of time, and it was a lot stricter in the past. As author Zimmerman indicated in his reading “Doing Gender” that “Those of us who taught courses in the area in the late 1960s and early 1970s were careful to distinguish one from the other.” (Zimmerman 1987) Nowadays, we know that the society is gradually changing and people are becoming more open-minded than before.

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Gender is a classification based on the social construction and maintenance of cultural distinctions between males and females. Gender is distinct to the Declaration of Independence because some rules restrict women from participating in certain things as stated “all men are created equal” (Jefferson). If everyone were

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As I suspected every person that I interviewed defined gender as the definition of sex. The second question was; do you believe in the idea of someone being transgendered? I asked this question to see, based on the definition they gave, why they believed or did not believe in it. It was interesting because, despite every defining gender as sex, two out of the five people said that they did in fact believe in the idea of being transgendered. Three out of five, on the other hand disagreed with the idea.

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“Whatever a “women” has to be “female” and man has to be “male”.” (Lorber) She also includes how one’s gender gives them characteristics that are feminine or masculine. This ties into Millers article because the girls are negatively biased of their science and math skills because in society it is a masculine dominant area. Lynn Webber also wrote A Conceptual Framework For Understanding Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality.

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Sexuality and gender identities are also the victims of media misinformation and are often misunderstood by the public because of such. There are also numerous accounts of journalists using improper and incorrect phrases to report on transgender issues (such as inaccurate pronouns or false comments which label sexuality/gender identity as a choice). Jay Poole accurately describes the methods that the mainstream media uses in defining identity when he states that “media representations of identities are dominantly constructed through a heteronormative lens, with traditional gender roles defining how one can or should be masculine or feminine” (279). This not only misconstrues the reality of gender identities but it also misguides children and

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The theory means to deconstruct heteronormative narratives and create a society with acceptance for the complexity of gender and sexuality. Sexuality is not an essential truth depending on one person's body, but rather how the person acts in reality. Sex and gender are both social constructions and should not be categorized by the binary system “feminine” or

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The computational representational theory of the mind (CRUM) is a theory devised to model the complexities of the human mind in cognitive science. Human thought processes have been simplified by thinking about abstract thought processes in terms of concrete computational procedures (Thagard, 11). CRUM theory surmises that thinking is the result of the application of operations to mental representations (Thagard, 11). Recent literature suggests our emotions are intrinsically tied to cognitive processes (Dalgleish and Power, 1999). Emotions are influential factors that affect mental representations such as concepts, analogies and imagery in cognitive science.

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Humans, in identifying any object, attempt to set it up to its opposite. Thus, humans refer to the identity of other sex in order

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White privilege can be recognised as a racist concept because in this concept people are assessed by race categories or a set of culturally constructed classifications. White privilege is a term which benefits people identified as white. According to Dottolo and Kaschak (2015, p. 179), white privilege refers to unearned race privileges which white people are likely to receive in Western societies, and it is beyond what is commonly experienced by non-white people under the same circumstances. White people are not necessarily conscious of the privileges they receive and how they influence their belief, value, power, attitudes and behaviours because some do not see a correlation between this privilege and racism due to their racial group membership.

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“A sex category is achieved through application of the sex criteria, but in everyday life, categorization is established and sustained by the socially required identificatory displays that proclaim one’s membership

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Unlike ‘sex’, which typically refers to the biological and physiological differences, gender is a sociological concept that describes the social and cultural constructions that is associated with one’s sex (Giddens & Sutton, 2013, p. 623-667). The constructed (or invented) characteristics that defines gender is an ongoing process that varies between societies and culture and it can change over time. For example, features that are overly masculine in one culture can be seen as feminine in another; however, the relation between the two should not be seen as static. Gender socialization is thought to be a major explanation for gender differences, where children adhere to traditional gender roles from different agencies of socialization. Gender

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In order to make sense of the world around us, it is important to sort information into mental categories. “The human mind must think with the aid of categories," Allport explained. "Once formed, categories are the basis for normal prejudgment.

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According to sexologists John Money and Anke Ehrhardt, sex and gender are separate categories. “Sex, they argued, refers to physical attributes and is anatomically and physiologically determined. Gender they saw as a psychological transformation - the internal conviction that one is either male or female (gender identity) and the behavioral expressions of that conviction” (Sterling 4). Although there are biological differences between the two sexes, but gender roles are socially constructed. They determine how males and females should think, speak, dress, behave and interact with society.

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What we today see as genders is the norms that follow when born as a girl or as a boy. What is being connected to male norms of masculinity is strength, aggression and dominance, while woman more often than not follow norms such as passivity, nurturing and subordination. We have come to realise in recent years that your gender and your sex is not the same thing. The fact that there is not only two genders but a lot more is also something that has been discovered. Transgender is those who is born as one gender, but identifies as another.

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1. The theory of social construction of gender in sociology refers to the origin of gender differences between males and females. According to this, culture and society create gender roles, making those roles prescribed as appropriate or ideal behavior for an individual of that specific sex. Statistics show that individuals who expressed gender non-conformity or a transgender identity, while they were in school, reported an alarming rate of harassment at 78%. In addition, incidents of physical assault were at 35%, and individuals who were victims of sexual violence were 12%.

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