Form Over Content: Generic Scope Communicates Essentialist Beliefs

• In Event: 3-228 - The Essence of my Group and Yours: Using Research on Essentialism to Clarify Intergroup Processes

Integrative Statement

Generic language (e.g., “tigers have stripes,” “girls hate math”) is a powerful vehicle for communicating essentialist beliefs (Gelman, Ware, & Kleinberg, 2010; Rhodes, Leslie, & Tworek, 2012). The present studies (N = 237, 5-7 year-old children) examined why this might be the case. One way generic language likely communicates essentialist beliefs is through the content of these statements, by leading children to generate kind-based explanations about particular properties; e.g., if a child hears “girls hate math,” he may infer that there must be an inherent causal basis for the generalization, which in turn supports essentialist beliefs. However, it is also possible that the form of generics is a crucial aspect to their communicative force: By describing a category with generics, a speaker communicates the belief that the category is an appropriate kind to generalize about, and presents this belief as common knowledge.

A unique feature of this latter account is that subsequently falsified generics—for which children have only ambiguous information about which, if any, specific properties are shared amongst category members—could nonetheless shape beliefs about the category. In the current studies, children were exposed to generic sentences about novel categories (e.g., “Zarpies have striped hair”), which were later contradicted in various ways. Some of these contradictions maintained the generic scope of the sentence (e.g., “Zarpies don’t have striped hair”; “No, that’s not right about Zarpies”), whereas others affirmed the property but contradicted the generic scope (e.g., “No, THIS Zarpie has striped hair”). We found that children held stronger beliefs that members of the category shared intrinsic causal mechanisms upon hearing contradictions that maintained the generic scope than when they heard statements that challenged the generic scope. These patterns were robust across both novel animal and novel social domains. Additional sub-analyses will be presented that examine different aspects of essentialist beliefs.

A striking implication of this proposal is that correcting the scope of generic statements’ form to a single individual—but not correcting their content—offers a useful strategy to counteract stereotypes. We tested this proposal by presenting children with generic statements about gender categories (e.g., “Girls have flurp hair”) that were either affirmed (e.g., “Yes, girls have flurp hair”) or corrected for generic scope (e.g., “No, THIS girl has flurp hair”). We found that correcting the generic form of statements about gender categories similarly lead to lower essentialist beliefs about gender. Thus, these studies provide evidence that generics influence conceptual development not only through the content they convey, but also through their form.

Authors

• Emily Foster-Hanson, New York University
  Presenting Author

• Sarah-Jane Leslie, Princeton University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Marjorie Rhodes, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author