When Children Do Not Essentialize Social Groups: Comparing Internalist and Structural Construals of Generics

• In Event: Learning About Others From Others: Implications for Stereotype Formation and Intervention

Abstract

Generic language has been argued, on both empirical and theoretical grounds (Gelman, 2010; Leslie, 2008), to promote an essentialized construal of categories, with adverse consequences for reasoning about social groups (Haslanger, 2011, 2015). For example, Rhodes, Leslie & Tworek (2012) demonstrated that teaching children and adults about a novel social group using generic language (vs. specific language) increased essentialized reasoning about the group. However, Vasilyeva, Gopnik, & Lombrozo (2018, in prep.) and Vasilyeva & Lombrozo (2020) found that generics and formal explanations are compatible with two construals, internalist and structural. Under the former, a statistical association between a category and a property is attributed to some internal, inherent aspects of category members; under a structural construal, it can be attributed to the influence of stable external constraints affecting category members in virtue of their position in a larger structure. For example, endorsing the generic “Black men end up in prison” need not signal a belief that the property (incarceration) reflects an inherent characteristic of category members (such as criminal inclinations); instead, it can point to stable socioeconomic constraints that together constitute the social position “Black” in the US. Under the structural construal, a generic claim need not invite essentialization. We tested this prediction in a study with 223 3-8-year-olds, adapting the methods from Rhodes et al. (2012). Participants learned about properties of two social groups, Zarpies and Lollies, either in the form of generic statements (e.g., “Zarpies sleep in tall trees”) or specific statements (e.g., “This Zarpie sleeps in tall trees”). Importantly, we varied the context in which we used the generic language: in the “generic + no framing” condition no additional information was provided, as in Rhodes et al. (2012); in the “generic + structural framing” condition children additionally learned that Zarpies live in a land of giants, and Lollies live in a land of elves, where this context could explain category properties (e.g., Zarpies sleep in trees so that giants don’t step on them at night). After learning the properties of Zarpies and Lollies through “generic + no framing,” “generic + structural framing,” or “specific” language, children completed a range of measures probing their construal of the social categories. Compared to the specific condition, both generic conditions promoted: (i) stronger generalization across category members; and (ii) spontaneous use of generics when participants taught a third party. However, the structural framing (relative to the other conditions) (iii) dramatically influenced explanations of category properties (reducing appeals to inherent properties), and (iv) reduced inferences that a property would emerge in a different environment in a “switched-at-birth” task, which is a signature of essentialist thinking. Thus, the role of generic language in stereotype formation is more nuanced than previously thought. Hearing generics does not necessarily prompt essentialized category representations; one way to block essentialist assumptions is to offer structural cues. We discuss methodological, theoretical, and practical implications of these findings, including the use of structural construal to mitigate negative consequences of generic language.

Authors

• Nadya Vasilyeva, Princeton University
  Presenting Author

• Alison Gopnik, University of California - Berkeley
  Non-Presenting Author

• Tania Lombrozo, Princeton University
  Non-Presenting Author