[Small steps toward an empathic multicultural world through a new perspective of social categorization as a tool in...

The investigation of the role and the mechanisms of social categorization has been in the focus of psychological research for quite a long time. However, the developmental approach to categorization and the arrangement of empirical findings within this field into a unified framework have received little attention so far. Based on the currently available evidence the paper proposes a new theory of 'culturally shared knowledge'. With the help of this approach we would like to draw attention to the fundamental role of social categorization in adaptive learning. In addition to providing a theoretical explanation of the experimental results, the last chapter describes practical techniques that might prove useful in the development of an empathic multicultural environment in the future.