Essentializing inferences

Ritchie, Katherine

doi:10.1111/mila.12360

Cited by 12 publications

(12 citation statements)

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“…Thus, by leading people to expect category members to be highly similar to each other, generics lead listeners to adopt views of category structure that could make them more likely to adopt stereotypes, even if the generics do not express negative content themselves. Ritchie (2021) recently made a similar proposal about predicate nominals, arguing that statements like "Anna is a female" trigger a presupposition that underpins essentialist beliefs.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Children are also "on the look-out" for cues about which kinds are meaningful as they use categories to learn and explain their experiences Gelman, 2003Gelman, , 2004Rhodes & Mandalaywala, 2017;Rhodes & Moty, 2020). When reliable speakers mark a kind as meaningful, children quietly adjust their own beliefs to match these cues (Lewis, 1979;Ritchie, 2021;Von Fintel, 2008). Thus, generics lead children to view kinds as meaningful because they communicate that others in their community view them as such.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this way, generic statements could introduce the concept of Zarpies, as a meaningful kind, into the common ground (i.e., the body of information that the speaker and listener mutually assume to be true and not up for debate; Atlas, 2004;Heim, 1982;Karttunen, 1974;Karttunen & Peters, 1979;Soames, 1982;Stalnaker, 2002). Upon hearing such a generic statement, listeners might quietly accept this view of the category by adjusting their own beliefs (Lewis, 1979;Von Fintel, 2008; for a similar proposal about predicate nominals, see Ritchie, 2021). Thus, via this possible mechanism, listeners could conclude that the categories referenced by generics are meaningful kinds because an informed, reliable speaker sees them that way and has introduced this belief as common knowledge.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Speaking of Kinds: How Correcting Generic Statements can Shape Children's Concepts

2022

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Generic language (e.g., “tigers have stripes”) leads children to assume that the referenced category (e.g., tigers) is inductively informative and provides a causal explanation for the behavior of individual members. In two preregistered studies with 4‐ to 7‐year‐old children (N = 497), we considered the mechanisms underlying these effects by testing how correcting generics might affect the development of these beliefs about novel social and animal kinds (Study 1) and about gender (Study 2). Correcting generics by narrowing their scope to a single individual limited beliefs that the referenced categories could explain what their members would be like while broadening the scope to a superordinate category (Study 2) uniquely limited endorsement of gender norms. Across both studies, correcting generics did not alter beliefs about feature heritability and had mixed effects on inductive inferences, suggesting that additional mechanisms (e.g., causal reasoning about shared features) contribute to the development of full‐blown essentialist beliefs. These results help illuminate the mechanisms by which generics lead children to view categories as having rich inductive and causal potential; in particular, they suggest that children interpret generics as signals that speakers in their community view the referenced categories as meaningful kinds that support generalization. The findings also point the way to concrete suggestions for how adults can effectively correct problematic generics (e.g., gender stereotypes) that children may hear in daily life.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Speaking of Kinds: How Correcting Generic Statements can Shape Children's Concepts

2022

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“…These relationships can be quite complex, as highlighted in recent work by Bailey and Knobe (2023), Mandalaywala (2020), and Peretz-Lange (2021). But most relevant for our purposes, essentialism has been shown to shape language use and vice versa (e.g., Ritchie, 2021). For example, the more people essentialize a group, the more willing they are to produce generic statements about the group (e.g., "men are good at math") compared to quantified statements (e.g., "some men are good at math"; Rhodes et al, 2012;Wodak et al, 2015).…”

Section: Essentialism About Social Groups and Identitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

People’s beliefs about pronouns reflect both the language they speak and their ideologies.

Bailey,

Dembroff,

Wodak

et al. 2024

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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Pronouns often convey information about a person's social identity (e.g., gender). Consequently, pronouns have become a focal point in academic and public debates about whether pronouns should be changed to be more inclusive, such as for people whose identities do not fit current pronoun conventions (e.g., gender non-binary individuals). Here, we make an empirical contribution to these debates by investigating which social identities lay speakers think that pronouns should encode and why. Across four studies, participants were asked to evaluate different types of real and hypothetical pronouns, including binary gender pronouns, race pronouns, and identity-neutral pronouns. We sampled participants from two languages with different pronoun systems: English (N = 1,120) and Turkish (N = 260). English pronouns commonly denote binary gender (e.g., he for men), whereas Turkish pronouns are identityneutral (e.g., o for anyone). Participants' reasoning about pronouns reflected both a familiarity preference (i.e., participants preferred the pronoun type used in their language) and-criticallyparticipants' social ideologies. In both language contexts, participants' ideological beliefs that social groups are inherently distinct (essentialism) and should be hierarchal (social dominance orientation) predicted relatively greater endorsement of binary gender pronouns and race pronouns. A preregistered experimental study with an English-speaking sample showed that the relationship between ideology and pronoun endorsement is causal: Ideologies shape attitudes toward pronouns. Together, the present research contributes to linguistic and psychological theories concerning how people reason about language and informs policy-relevant questions about whether and how to implement language changes for social purposes.

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“…For instance, essentialism has been connected to greater stereotyping (Brescoll & LaFrance, 2004), more negative attitudes toward certain groups (e.g., Black people; Chen & Ratliff, 2018), more positive attitudes toward other groups (e.g., gay people; Haslam & Levy, 2006), and less blame for moral wrongdoing (e.g., Bailey et al, 2021)-these relationships can be quite complex and for recent discussions see Bailey and Knobe (2023), Mandalaywala (2020), and Peretz-Lange, (2021). Most relevant for our purposes, essentialism also shapes language use and vice versa (e.g., Ritchie, 2021). For instance, the more people essentialize a group, the more willing they are to endorse generic statements about the group (e.g., "men are good at math") compared to quantified statements (e.g., "some men are good at math"; Rhodes et al, 2012;Wodak et al, 2015).…”

Section: Essentialism About Social Groups and Identitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

People’s Beliefs About Pronouns Reflect Both the Language They Speak and Their Ideologies

Bailey¹,

Dembroff²,

Wodak³

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Across languages, pronouns encode a range of social information, such as the speaker’s age relative to the addressee (e.g., the Hindi pronoun aap) or the referent’s gender (e.g., the English pronoun he). The assumptions underlying certain pronouns are uncontroversial (e.g., people are different ages). Other pronouns, however, pertain to aspects of the social world that are currently being fiercely debated (e.g., whether gender is binary and apparent). While prior research has explored people’s beliefs about social groups and identities, less is known about how people reason about the intersection of identity and language: Which social identities (if any) do lay speakers think that pronouns should encode, and why do they think this? We found that U.S. English-speaking participants (NTotal = 1,120) endorsed gender pronouns more than various other types, including pronouns based on other identities (e.g., age, race) and identity-neutral pronouns (Studies 1–3). In addition, participants’ ideological beliefs about social groups as distinct (essentialism) and hierarchal (social dominance orientation) related to (Study 2; preregistered) and causally influenced (Study 3; preregistered) their endorsement of both gender and race pronouns. The present findings address an underexplored set of lay beliefs about social identities and language. Despite recent calls for greater use of identity-neutral pronouns, English-speaking participants in this sample overwhelmingly endorsed the use of gender pronouns, in part because of their social ideologies.

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Essentializing inferences

Cited by 12 publications

References 62 publications

Speaking of Kinds: How Correcting Generic Statements can Shape Children's Concepts

Speaking of Kinds: How Correcting Generic Statements can Shape Children's Concepts

People’s beliefs about pronouns reflect both the language they speak and their ideologies.

People’s Beliefs About Pronouns Reflect Both the Language They Speak and Their Ideologies

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