During my younger days, I used to observe other people’s behaviours and bucket them based on their characteristics. Mind you, this was often done subconsciously. I assume this mechanism helped anticipate other’s future actions. In the business world, we love doing this by building models to forecast future events. This was needed to help plan for such events in a timely manner. However, in our personal life - I don’t think this strategy of bucketing people is a sound strategy. This is because when people behave badly towards you, we bucket them in a way that has negative traits associated with them. Us as humans, we are more likely to remember and hold on to negative feelings over positive ones. You can see this in the celebrity world. Often after a well known figure is discovered to have committed a crime or involved in some sort of scandal - they are often outcasted. All their good deeds are forgotten and the media would implicitly move them to a negative bucket.
Instead of bucketing others, it will be more productive influencing others. This would be demonstrated through your own behaviour. When someone displays positive traits, we should aim to mimic these traits. When someone displays undesirable traits, we should aim to influence them by demonstrating behaviour we think is acceptable.
We humans behave like others around us. That’s why it’s important we surround ourselves around folks we think will influence us in the right way. We should aim to be influenced by a broad spectrum of people including ones we normally would not associate with. On the other hand, if we observe negative behaviour, rather than confront or silently bucket others - we should aim to demonstrate the right behaviour and be a role model instead.