Heritability
We will use Switched-at-birth tasks to assess participants’ beliefs about the heritability of category-linked properties. Participants will be told a story about a child who is born to a Fooly mother but has been raised by an Iranian mother. Children in our sample know Iranians don’t exhibit Fooly characteristics, so Iran is selected as the contrasting culture. For instance, participants in the cultural condition will be told: “One day a Fooly had a baby named Sharlie. Sharlie came from her tummy. But right after Sharlie was born, Sharlie went to live with an Iranian. The Iranian took care of Sharlie. She played with Sharlie, fed Sharlie, and loved Sharlie. Sharlie grew up with the Iranian and never saw the Fooly again. Her Fooly mother spins in circles when the sun goes down. Iranians don’t.”
Participants will then be asked about whether Sharly will grow up to have Fooly characteristics (heritability) or not (the effect of the environment). For example, they will be asked, “when Sharly is older, does Sharly spins in circles when the sun goes down, like Foolies, or not, like Iranians?” Predicting that the child would grow up to poses a familiar Fooly feature (like her biological mother) will be coded as an essentialist answer. Two comprehension check questions will also be asked (“whose tummy did Sharly come out of? And who took care of Sharly?”).
In addition to questions used by Noyes and Keil (2020), we will also add one more question to each trial. We ask participants “Is Sharly a Zarpie or not?” (“yes” will be coded as an essentialist and “no” as a non-essentialist response). This is to check inferences about category membership beyond reasoning about shared category properties.