Abstract
Generic descriptions (e.g., ”girls are emotional”) are argued to play a
major role in the development of essentialist reasoning about social
categories (Rhodes et al., 2018). However, studies have been conducted
dominantly in English-speaking communities and among Western samples.
This is a significant limitation given that a number of theories focus
on the linguistic form of generic statements and distinguish between
linguistic form and content in leading to essentialism. In this study,
we plan to extend the research on generics and social essentialism
beyond English-speaking, Western samples. We aim to explore how generic
statements with different content (biological or cultural) about a novel
social category may lead to essentialist beliefs among children and
adults in Iran, a Persian-speaking community that is underrepresented in
the literature. Using a design similar to Noyes & Keil (2020), we plan
to expose 4 to 9-year-old children (N = 104) and adults (N = 104) to
generic or specific statements (between subjects) ascribing biological
or cultural features to a novel social category. We will measure the
degree to which exposure to these statements leads to essentialist
reasoning in terms of inheritability and “kindhood”. This work
contributes to diversifying the field and critically informs theories of
social essentialism.
When do generics lead to social essentialism: developmental evidence
from Iran
“Men don’t do household chores.” (مردها کارِ خانه انجام نمیدهند).
These types of expressions which refer to “kinds” of people, animals,
or artifacts are known as generic statements (Carlson & Pelletier,
1995; Shipley, 1993; Gelman and Raman, 2003). Generic statements are
common in English (Rhodes et al., 2012), and a growing body of research
programs have documented a link between generic language and the
tendency to reason about categories as “kinds” (Gelman et al., 2010;
Cimpian & Markman, 2011; Rhodes et al., 2012). Despite the prevalence
of generic statements across languages, the impact of generics has
largely been studied in an exclusively English-speaking context and
within Western cultures (but see Segall et al., 2015 for an exception).
The lack of linguistic and cultural variability in this literature is
particularly problematic because 1. the research on generic language
overwhelmingly conducted with English speakers draws general conclusions
about the structure of generics in relation to categorization, without
any qualifiers about the role of specific language grammar; this
suggests that a link exists between reasoning about categories in terms
of “kinds” and generic statements across a range of languages; yet
this has not actually been tested. 2. Generic language has been
hypothesized as a key linguistic feature that cues children into which
social categories are most relevant and important in their specific
cultural context. Given this purported function of generics, and the
cross-cultural ubiquity of generics, generic language is a plausible
factor by which children across the world acquire categories and beliefs
about social categories. Yet again, beyond English-speaking children in
Western countries, this assumption has rarely been tested.
In the current study, we draw on influential work on the role of generic
language in social essentialism among English-speaking participants to
design and carry out a replication-plus-extension study with
Persian-speaking children and adults living in Iran. Specifically, we
plan to replicate Noyes and Keil (2020) on the question of how generic
statements with different content (i.e., biological versus cultural
information) impact reasoning about social categories as “kinds” and
as defined by inheritable features, dimensions of essentialist reasoning
about social categories. In addition to implementing the same design and
asking the same questions as in Noyes and Keil (2020), we plan to
include a third condition in the current study, where category
descriptions are provided in “specific” as opposed to generic
statements. This will serve as a control condition in our study.
In what follows, we briefly review the literature on generic language in
child-directed speech and its role in the development of social
essentialism (one important type of social category belief: Gelman,
2003; Rhodes & Mandalaywala, 2017). We will then describe the value to
be gained by extending this literature to research among children and
adults in Iran, a non-Western, Persian-speaking sample underrepresented
in psychological research. Lastly, we will detail the planned study.