Why are humans obsessed with archetypes/tropes? Think of MBTI or zodiac signs. Especially females

Why are humans obsessed with archetypes/tropes? Think of MBTI or zodiac signs. Especially females.

>Why are humans obsessed with archetypes
It's easier to label something with a single word than with detailed stats.

Race and gender are other examples. Humans seem to be obsessed with creating artificial social constructs.

We like categorizing things for simplicity.

Do you want to call it a druid or do you want a list of 200 spells?

It's a form of information compression. Makes things easier for the metabolically-strapped brain.

Humans are social animals, we like to group with each other based on common traits and alienate that which we consider the "Other". You can see all of human history and culture at large is based on this drive.

Because it's important to know what gives rise to the plot/subplot and etc.

It's the way we learn. At first it's good and bad, then at some point the neutral "okay" finds its place. Then functionality finds its way into the mix so you've got good seat and bad seat. As time evolves the categories evolve "nice black couch," "ugly yellow loveseat." In the meantime you're being subjected to social exposure you still use the same basal mechanism to describe and sort people. Depending on direct social exposure one may be swayed by adding additional preconceptual (around blacks, never relax) information, as time goes on some of this additional predictive data is shed through experience, and some remains, while some is supplemented. In any case there are generalities to be made which cover the broad strokes of normal stimuli. Practically all seats share the same form, most of them have specific terms dedicated to their different but similar iterations.

Couch, loveseat, recliner, stool, bench, fouton, chair, sectional, sofa.
Fatass, whore, stoner, jock, hobo, NEET, soccermom, drug dealer, normie.

I've wondered this myself.

My guess is that it's useful to be able to lump a large sum of things into one category ex: lions,bears, wolves as predators or certain plants that medical properties. That way you don't have to remember the intricate details of everyone single one but rather you just know that really tall brown and green thing is a tree.

Same reason you'd want to use libraries when programming

>Do you want to call it a druid or do you want a list of 200 spells?
I want to choose a area of magic to specialize in then choose which 200 spells I want from all the available spells, with spells in my specialization more powerful than normal. Like in real RPGs

>humans

Lets not get ahead of ourselves. Psychologists barely cut the bar for being considered sub-human as it is.

>Why are humans obsessed with archetypes/tropes?
Over generalization and use of stereotypes is basically one mechanism the human mind employs to avoid information overload. Extracting a pattern, no matter how tenuous it may be, is a start.

Problems and conflicts come later when people do not refine their initial mental model to something that accounts for variations, or bring in patterns that have greater validity.

Sage here.

>Why are humans obsessed with archetypes/tropes
>Especially females

I'm not really too sure if humans in general are obsessed with archetypes and tropes, but the reason why common forms and motifs arise in narratives, visual art and music is because it allows for a rich language and theory of art to develop. It facilitates the communication of an artists' ideas with other artists and allows both the audience and the critic to have a way to approach their work in a systematic fashion. I think that one could make a very convincing argument that all art (that is considered good or well-constructed) is in general the careful assembly of various tropes, references and forms in novel ways with very slight variations from other things that were done previously.* Since a very important way in which people interface with the world and try to make sense of their lives is through art (whether through narratives, music or whatever), these tropes become focal points for people to process reality, so fixation on them is natural. This would be at least my guess.

*Just for a good strong example, you could look at classical ballet. Most of every work is the careful assembly of (a shockingly small set of) moves that are drilled in isolation, then performed in a particular order the same way every time, set to music.

A. They're not *entirely* artificial
B. Those ones that you mention were championed for different reasons than archetypes are, namely, economic gain

kek

People often like to be lumped into groups, especially if members of those groups are thought to have generally positive traits like MBTI or zodiac groups tend to. It provides a sense of belonging and a source of pride that social creatures like humans enjoy.

It's also easier for everyone else to just lump those who want to be lumped into groups than it is to try to understand them as unique individuals.

MBTI is gaining popularity because of ease of access to online quizzes. and because it at least seems more scientific than the zodiac does.

People wish to find some sort of self understanding, but also don't want to do any critical thinking or introspection to find said understanding.

This. A long long time ago Those that recognized patterns survived those that didn't didnt

>Veeky Forums is self realizing that generalizing people is what dumb lazy people do
>Veeky Forums does nothing but put people into stupidly simplistic categories eg, brainless woman, violent black, perfidious jew

I'm not saying it's lazy or not I'm just saying why we do it its biology

These... we mainly do it because pigeon-holing somebody into some category makes them seem more understandable and predictable. We cannot cope with the fact that people are complex, and although you can get the gist of what somebody is about, they are way too complex to really understand in their entirety.

Plot such as x = time progresses, y = archetype changes.

>gender is a social construct
nice meme, good thing that insects and reptiles have societies which reinforce those constructs.