Generics designate kinds but not always essences

Abstract

People believe that some categories are kinds with reliable causal structure and high inductive potential (e.g., Tigers). Widely endorsed theories propose that people are biased to assume kinds are essential, and so naturally determined by internal causal properties. Generic language (e.g., “Men like sports”) is one mechanism thought to evoke this bias. We propose instead that generics principally designate that categories are kinds. Participants can entertain diverse causal structures in the presence of generics: Hearing that biological properties generalize to a category (e.g., “Men grow beards”) prompts participants to infer essential structure, but hearing neutral or social properties (“Women are underpaid”) generalize prompts other causal beliefs. Thus, generics induce essentialism only in in interaction with cues that reasonably prompt essentialist explanation. We tested our model with adult participants (N = 739 total), using measures that disentangle essentialist beliefs from kind beliefs. In Study 1, we replicate prior methods with our new measures, and find that generics influence kind beliefs more than essentialism. In Study 2, we vary property content (biological vs. cultural properties), and show that generics only increase essentialism when paired with biological properties. In Study 3, we show that generics designate kinds but not essentialism when neutral properties are used across animals, tools, and people. In Study 4, we show that believing a category is a kind increases the spontaneous production of generic statements, regardless of whether the kind is essential or socially constructed. Generics do not necessitate essentialist beliefs. Participants were flexible in their reasoning about kinds.

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