Generic language and essentialism
Numerous studies with English-speaking children have documented the role of generic statements, as an important cultural factor, in the development of essentialism – the belief that categories have internal, natural causes for, and markers of, category membership (Gelman et al., 2010; Leshin et al., 2021; Rhodes et al., 2012; 2018). Children learn about categories, reason about the world, and explain patterns through a cognitive heuristic to represent categories as “kinds” (Keil, 1989; Markman; 1989). In fact, children develop this ability early on and are able to reason about and refer to more abstract groupings of objects, animals, or people(Sugarman, 1981; Mandler, 2004; Rakison & Oakes, 2003). It is argued that generic language is one of the main mechanisms through which this learning can occur (Gelman et al., 2010; Rhodes et al., 2018), although the precise mechanism by which generics early categorization is still up for debate, an idea that we will return to later.
In contrast to non-generic expressions that convey information about specific objects or individuals (“this squirrel sleeps a lot”), generics transmit information about the kind of objects or individuals as a group (“squirrels sleep a lot”). Furthermore, while a generic sentence attributes a common property to a category, in comparison with quantified expressions (“most squirrels sleep a lot”), generic statements are silent on how prevalent the property is among members of the category. Generic language is prevalent in communications with children, and children understand generic statements by the preschool age (Gelman, Waxman, & Klienberg, 2008; Gelman, Taylor, & Nguyen, 2004; Cimpian & Markman, 2008).
Perhaps a side-effect of facilitating category representation, generic statements lead to essentialist beliefs about novel animal species (Cimpian et al., 2010; Gelman et al., 2010), as well as about familiar (Cimpian & Markman, 2011; Cimpian & Erickson, 2012) and novel social categories (Leshin et al., 2021; Rhodes et al., 2012). Psychological essentialism refers to a set of intuitive, interrelated beliefs about a category to represent the category as a natural kind and implies that its members share an underlying essence that causes common observable features (Gelman, 2003; Rhodes & Mandalaywala, 2017). Essentialist beliefs about social categories (i.e., social essentialism) have been observed among a wide age range including children as young as 4 years and adults across different cultures (Davoodi et al., 2019; del Rio & Strasser, 2011; Zhu, 2022). Across social category types, social essentialism is often associated with various kinds of stereotyping and prejudice among both children (race: Mandalaywala et al., 2019; ethnicity: Diesendruck & Menahem, 2015) and adults (Mandalaywala et al., 2017; Haslam & Whelan, 2008). While children readily develop essentialist beliefs about a number of social categories by early to middle childhood, only a subset of all possible social categories becomes the target of essentialist beliefs. That is, among infinite ways of categorizing people, both children and adults consider only some categories as informative, immutable, and/or inborn. This raises the question of what underlying mechanisms lead people to essentialize particular social categories.
Previous studies suggest that essentialist beliefs about a social category vary as a function of the social context, including the structural, cultural, and–of particular interest here– thelinguistic features of the community a child grows up in (Segall et al., 2015; for a review see Gelman & Fine, 2020). Much of the research exploring the links between generic language and essentialism has been done in an experimental context, and with novel social groups, to ensure that pre-existing beliefs about the group do not interfere with essentialist beliefs. In seminal work, Rhodes et al. (2012) exposed children and adults to a novel social category called “Zarpies”. Sixteen descriptions about Zarpies were presented in a picture book and in different forms (generic vs. specific) in two within-subjects experimental conditions. In one condition, descriptions were generic (“Zarpies love to eat flowers”) and in the other, specific (“this Zarpie loves to eat flowers”). In the next step, participants answered questions commonly used to measure essentialist beliefs. Results showed that when children and adults hear generic, compared to specific descriptions, they tend to essentialize the category of “Zarpies” more often. In more recent work, Leshin et al. (2021) found that generic language (e.g., “Zarpies hop over the puddle”), in comparison to specific language, increased two critical aspects of essentialist reasoning. Generic statements lead children to infer that (a) category-related properties arise from intrinsic causal mechanisms (e.g., “Zarpies hate to get wet”, rather than “he needed to get to the other side”) and (b) These features are inflexible (e.g., “he wouldn’t sometimes choose to splash in it instead”). However, when it comes to heritability of these traits, they did not find any difference between generics and specific conditions.
Why (and when) do generics elicit essentialism? Why do generic sentences lead to social essentialist beliefs? To address this question, we need to have in mind that essentialism is a multi-faceted construct (Haslam, Rothschild, and Ernst, 2000). An essentialist view of ethnicity, such as Turks, for example, implies that (1) Turks are alike in fundamental and sometimes non-obvious ways (homogeneity), (2) similarities amongst Turks, and differences between Turks and non-Turks, are due to some internal reasons as opposed to external factors (inherence), (3) commonalities between Turks are inborn and often heritable (naturalness), and (4) being a Turk is immutable, objective, and discrete and there are no in-between cases – a person is either a Turk or not a Turk. Whereas these intuitive beliefs are usually interrelated, it is conceivable that an individual believes only some of them and not others; this is especially true for children (e.g., Gelman, Heyman, & Legare, 2007). For example, one can believe that Turks share many similarities (homogenous ) but also believe that these similarities are due to some historical, cultural factors, and non-biological dispositions (and therefore, not innate ). Additionally, generic statements can be about various types of properties. They might be about a (pseudo-)biological feature of a social category (e.g., Turks have strong hearts), or a cultural feature (e.g., Turks pray every day in the morning). Moreover, generic statements may or may not be accompanied by explanations describing the origins of features (e.g., Turks have strong hearts because they live in the highlands).
Thus, understanding the role of generics in essentialism starts with a systematic decomposition of the kind of generic statements as they relate to the different components of essentialism. In the next sections, we briefly describe two proposed pathways from generics to different modes of essentialist thinking and summarize related studies aligned with each account. Note that these accounts are not mutually exclusive and may work simultaneously in many cases. The main difference between these two accounts lies in the following question: Does the linguistic form of generics (i.e., generalizations) in and of itself and regardless of content elicit essentialist beliefs about social categories?
Account 1: Explaining generic information through essentialism – When a property is ascribed to a category through a generic statement (e.g., Turks eat pastries), the property is viewed as a non-accidental feature related to this group, thus demanding a category-based explanation. Based on this account, the psychological processes that generate the category-based explanations function in a way that often result in essentialist thinking. For instance, Cimpian and Salomon (2014) suggest that the mental systems that generate explanations for observations tend to rely on inherent properties of objects, instead of structural and relational features (called inherence heuristics). As a result, to explain the perceived regularities in a category conveyed through generics, children are likely to assume that there is an inherent “essence” shared by members of the category which has caused the mentioned features. For example, Turks eat pastries because their stomachs were designed to like sweets. This account suggests that the connection between generics and social essentialism depends on the function and constraints of our mental explanation-generating system.
Of note, this account implies that there is no necessary connection between the linguistic form of generics and essentialization. It is rather, the content of generic statements that leads to essentialism, in instances where content conveys biological information. In fact, children are able to conceive non-essentialist, structural explanations for regularities in a category as a result of exposure to generic statements that emphasize the environment (Vasilyeva & Lombrozo, 2020). Based on this account, if information contained in or accompanied by generics signals that referenced regularities are due to factors external to the category, generics do not necessarily elicit essentialist beliefs (Noyes and Keil, 2020; Hoicka et al., 2021). For example, Noyes and Keil (2020) found that by hearing generic sentences about a novel social category (“Vawnsies”), children and adults expressed essentialist beliefs (specifically inheritability) onlywhen generic sentences had biological content (“Vawnsies feel sick when they drink milk”) and not when they were cultural (“Vawnsies believe that fish talk to God”). Thus, the contextual information attached to the generics matter in whether or not generic language leads to essentialism (see also Hoicka et al., 2021).
Account 2: Confirming essences through generic information – On the second account, generics do not lead to essentialism, but only confirm essentialist reasoning. On this account, the pathway from generics to social essentialism is independent of the content of the generic statements and the consequent inherent explanations. According to this account, children learn to essentialize categories very early on and generic language signals to them which social categories are salient in their communities and prime “candidates” for essential reasoning (Benitez et al., 2022, Foster-Hanson et al., 2022). Consequently, regardless of the explicit information communicated in a generic sentence, using generic terms (e.g., “Turks”) signals to children that these categories are culturally relevant and appropriate targets for essentialization. In support of this hypothesis, researchers have found that generic sentences can elicit more essentialist beliefs than specifics, even when they get negated or get corrected by a knowledgeable character (Foster-Hanson et al., 2022; Foster-Hanson et al., 2016). Thus, on this account, one mechanism through which generics contribute to the development of essentialism is through the linguistic form of generic statements, which signals to children the relevant ways to categorize the social world.
To sum up, the second account suggests that generic sentences, regardless of their content, elicit generalization and internal explanations for the behaviors and preferences of category members. The first account, however, posits that only through additional biological information in their content, generic statements lead to essentialist reasoning, especially beliefs about heritability.