If It Looks Like A Duck: Categories And Associations

“If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck.”

Or so I’m told.

This type of logic can be pretty handy. In business, in life, it helps us make quick decisions. It’s our shortcut to making sense of a complex world.

But what happens when the duck is a decoy? When our mental shortcuts start doing our thinking for us?

The truth is, using categories and associations can help us use what we know, to figure out what we don’t know. They help us navigate, but can also lead us astray.

The Radio Dial

Growing up, I listened to two radio stations. 102.5 KZOK was Classic Rock, and 107.7 KNDD, otherwise known as The End was Seattle’s Alternative Rock.

Radio stations use Categories and Associations to bring in listeners and advertisers.

But some of the guys were listening to 99.9 KISW, Seattle’s Best Rock.

KISW is a rock station, I clearly like rock music, so this type of categorization helps me to quickly understand that 99.9 KISW is going to be just fine and dandy on the upcoming road trip.

See how that works?

But categories don’t exist in isolation. They layer, overlap, and compete. This is where problems can accumulate. When our duck-spotting skills can fail.

When Categories Collide

These stations are part of categories besides rock music. They mention Seattle quite a bit. Does geography assist me in finding the music I like?

As a category, geography doesn’t lead me to Stone Temple Pilots, but it does help me find a STP concert if they come to town.

So we can see that local categories help local advertisers. The Paramount Theater in this case.

Are you with me?

Root Sports is the TV network that carries all the Seattle Mariner games. The M’s are the only Baseball team between Seattle and Minnesota, so their geography spreads across multiple states. You’d never really notice, Julio and Cal don’t seem to care, but during election season, when the politicians are doing their fearmongering, we start getting local political ads. The problem is, there’s a lot of local in the region, and no matter how convincing the ads are, I can’t vote in Montana’s congressional race.

You might as well try to sell me Ketchup Chips from Canada. Sure, I want them. I’m only human. But those ad dollars are wasted on me. And this is the obvious flaw with categories.

Self-quoting from my best seller, Passing Notes to Strangers, “when you cast too wide a net, you catch rubber boots.”

Marketers would be wise to use categories, but they need to use categories that are helpful. And this is why local radio has consolidated and combusted. Music is genre based rather than geography based.

Categories help people use what they know, to figure out what they don’t know. And they do this by helping our human operating system make associations.

Associations

Associations can be learning tools, but they can also lead us to false conclusions. They are proxies rather than principals.

You like chocolate, so you’ll really like this chocolate ice cream. It’s logical, but that doesn’t make it true. Maybe my teeth are sensitive to the cold. Maybe I’m lactose intolerant. Maybe I got abandoned at a Dairy Queen in my youth.

Associations are shortcuts. And sometimes when you take a shortcut you get lost in the woods. The truth is, it needs to look AND quack like a duck, to be a duck. When we only use associations, we can fool ourselves.

Tarzan thought he was an ape. Simba thought he was a grub-eating warthog.

WeWork thought it was a technology company. Turns out they rent office space.

Associations tell us that it doesn’t need to quack. Not necessarily.

American flag on the back of your pickup truck? We all know who you voted for, don’t we?

Maybe.

When Associations Lead You Astray

You do CrossFit? Well, you must also be keto. Or at least paleo, right?

I keep myself in reasonable shape. I eat whole foods, mostly, and genuinely love a good workout.

This is not a health and fitness blog, so I’ll get to the point. Based on what you’ve learned about my lifestyle, what categories did you put me in? What associations have you made?

Nowhere in this complex fitness regimen do I survive on cheese, lard, and ribeye steaks. In fact, I start nearly every day with a bowl of old fashion oatmeal. And yet, within a week of each other, two different family members mentioned that I don’t eat carbs.

I took it as a compliment.

But this is association at work.

The association around my diet is innocuous, but just like the bird flu jumping from one species to the next, when idea viruses make a jump, to a system or place they don’t belong, they can become incredibly inaccurate.

Jumping to conclusions, a shortcut in your mental models, can save time but it can also be dangerous.

The kid in the hoodie. He doesn’t belong in this neighborhood. He must be a criminal.

Associating one thing with the other when they don’t belong. They CAN happen together, but they don’t necessarily happen together. And this is a powerful psychological mechanism that should be avoided. Especially if the decision is important.

Incorrect associations create a heuristic, a mental shortcut, that says people who are health-conscious, who choose eggs over Eggos, follow keto diets. It says that people who listen to 102.5 KZOK Classic Rock will also enjoy 99.9 KISW, Seattle’s Best Rock, without even thinking about how Metallica impacts the whole damn thing.

And what about the truck driving, flag waving, republican? Wait, maybe they are a libertarian. Hold on a second, maybe they are in route to an Independence Day parade.

Breaking Free From Categories & Associations

Brands do this too. Tesla attached itself to the environmentally conscious, just as Patagonia did. After their initial crossing of the chasm, you’d see the car, or the jacket and you’d associate it with the environment. But now? Now, it’s understood that their products compete for the broader market on quality and performance. Their initial market “beachhead,” the first niche early majority, was just a starting point.

But for many, the heuristic still holds. For others, it has changed once again.

What if it’s a Tesla Cybertruck waving that flag? Environmentalist?

What if it’s an investment banker wearing the Patagonia? Conservationist?

How do these heuristics arrive in our minds? Surely, we didn’t just come up with the idea that all CrossFiters are keto or that all kids in hoodies are criminals.

The way these associations spread and then stick reveals something fascinating about how our minds create shortcuts at the expense of substance.

We need categories. They help us file and organize a complex world. Rock stations here, news stations there. But when we let those categories create associations, we do it at a cost. The cost of accuracy and honesty.

The kid in the hoodie, the CrossFitter, the Tesla driver, do we know them? Do we understand their motivations?

The real wisdom isn’t in abandoning categories or ignoring associations—it’s in understanding the difference between them. Knowing when they are helping us think and when they are doing our thinking for us.