Structural Thinking about Social Categories: Evidence from Formal Explanations, Generics, and Generalization

Nadya Vasilyeva, Tania Lombrozo

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

1 Scopus citations

Abstract

Most theories of kind representation suggest that people posit internal, essence-like factors believed to underlie kind membership and the observable properties of members. Across two studies (N = 234), we show that adults can construe properties of social kinds as products of both internal and structural (stable external) factors. 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 a particular pattern of generalization to individuals when the individuals' category membership and structural position are preserved. Our findings thus challenge these phenomena as signatures of essentialist 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 property mutability. These findings have important implications for reasoning about social kinds.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 41st Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society
Subtitle of host publicationCreativity + Cognition + Computation, CogSci 2019
PublisherThe Cognitive Science Society
Pages1164-1170
Number of pages7
ISBN (Electronic)0991196775, 9780991196777
StatePublished - 2019
Event41st Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Creativity + Cognition + Computation, CogSci 2019 - Montreal, Canada
Duration: Jul 24 2019Jul 27 2019

Publication series

NameProceedings of the 41st Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Creativity + Cognition + Computation, CogSci 2019

Conference

Conference41st Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Creativity + Cognition + Computation, CogSci 2019
Country/TerritoryCanada
CityMontreal
Period7/24/197/27/19

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Computer Science Applications
  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Cognitive Neuroscience

Keywords

  • essentialism
  • generalization
  • inherence
  • kind representation
  • social categorization
  • structural explanation

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