Why independent cultures think alike when it comes to categories When it comes to categorization, such as interpreting and curating art, the dominant hypothesis is that people are born with categories already in their brains. But a new study from the Network Dynamics Group (NDG) at the Annenberg School for Communication has discovered a novel explanation. In an experiment in which people were asked to categorize unfamiliar shapes, individuals and small groups created many different unique categorization systems while large groups created systems that were nearly identical to one another. Some of the unfamiliar shapes participants were shown during the experiment. (Image: Annenberg School for Communication)