TY - JOUR
T1 - Structural thinking about social categories
T2 - Evidence from formal explanations, generics, and generalization
AU - Vasilyeva, Nadya
AU - Lombrozo, Tania
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the National Science Foundation (Grant SMA-1730660 ). We thank Sandeep Prasada and two anonymous referees for their useful suggestions.
Funding Information:
This work was supported by the National Science Foundation (Grant SMA-1730660). We thank Sandeep Prasada and two anonymous referees for their useful suggestions.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 The Authors
PY - 2020/11
Y1 - 2020/11
N2 - Many theories of kind representation suggest that people posit internal, essence-like factors that underlie kind membership and explain properties of category members. Across three studies (N = 281), we document the characteristics of an alternative form of construal according to which the properties of social kinds are seen as products of structural factors: stable, external constraints that obtain due to the kind's social position. Internalist and structural construals are similar in that both support formal explanations (i.e., “category member has property P due to category membership C”), generic claims (“Cs have P”), and the generalization of category properties to individual category members when kind membership and social position are confounded. Our findings thus challenge these phenomena as signatures of internalist thinking. However, once category membership and structural position are unconfounded, different patterns of generalization emerge across internalist and structural construals, as do different judgments concerning category definitions and the dispensability of properties for category membership. We discuss the broader implications of these findings for accounts of formal explanation, generic language, and kind representation.
AB - Many theories of kind representation suggest that people posit internal, essence-like factors that underlie kind membership and explain properties of category members. Across three studies (N = 281), we document the characteristics of an alternative form of construal according to which the properties of social kinds are seen as products of structural factors: stable, external constraints that obtain due to the kind's social position. Internalist and structural construals are similar in that both support formal explanations (i.e., “category member has property P due to category membership C”), generic claims (“Cs have P”), and the generalization of category properties to individual category members when kind membership and social position are confounded. Our findings thus challenge these phenomena as signatures of internalist thinking. However, once category membership and structural position are unconfounded, different patterns of generalization emerge across internalist and structural construals, as do different judgments concerning category definitions and the dispensability of properties for category membership. We discuss the broader implications of these findings for accounts of formal explanation, generic language, and kind representation.
KW - Essentialism
KW - Generalization
KW - Inherence
KW - Kind representation
KW - Social categorization
KW - Structural explanation
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U2 - 10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104383
DO - 10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104383
M3 - Article
C2 - 32645521
AN - SCOPUS:85087402761
SN - 0010-0277
VL - 204
JO - Cognition
JF - Cognition
M1 - 104383
ER -