Federico Cella

Mirabile et al. (2024) provide evidence that property valence—i.e., the perceived dangerousness of the ascribed properties—affects the endorsement of generics, an effect we did not observe (Cella et al., 2022). To address this difference, Mirabile et al. re-analyzed our Study 3a data, including the responses from a sample of participants we excluded, questioning the rationale for their exclusion. They further used a Bayesian framework and suggested that the frequentist models we used cannot provide stable estimates for the parameters. This commentary addresses Mirabile et al.’s concerns regarding our methodology. We first discuss our recruitment for Study 3a; we then focus on concerns about our statistical models.

Psycholinguistic evidence shows that grammatical gender can shape mental representations, influencing how individuals interpret ambiguous scenarios. This study investigates whether varying the linguistic formulation of the “specialist riddle” affects the ability to recognize the surgeon as a woman. We tested four versions of the riddle on Italian high-school students (n = 691), manipulating the term used for “surgeon” to compare the masculine form, a control condition, a gender-neutral periphrasis, and an innovative gender-neutral form. Participants exposed to the masculine generic form perceived the riddle as more difficult and were markedly less likely to identify the surgeon as a woman compared to those exposed to the gender-neutral formulations, especially the innovative one. These findings illustrate how grammatical gender can influence mental representations and highlight the potential of alternative linguistic forms to mitigate the effects of the generic masculine or the “male as default” bias.

I generici esprimono affermazioni generali come “I leoni ruggiscono”, e vengono comunemente usati per esprimere stereotipi, come “Le donne sono emotive”. Queste costruzioni sono oggetto di un dibattito interdisciplinare che spazia dalla filosofia del linguaggio alla linguistica e alla psicologia. Introduciamo il tema discutendo i test che permettono di distinguere i generici, le loro proprietà linguistiche e le principali teorie sulla loro semantica. Offriamo poi una panoramica delle loro implicazioni cognitive: i dati sull’acquisizione, l’ipotesi che siano generalizzazioni automatiche, la relazione con l’essenzialismo e l’asimmetria inferenziale che ne caratterizza l’interpretazione. Concludiamo con il dibattito sul ruolo dei generici nella discriminazione. Generics express general claims, such as “Lions roar”, and are commonly used to express stereotypes, such as “Women are emotional”. These constructions sparked an interdisciplinary debate, ranging from philosophy of language to linguistics and psychology. We introduce generics by discussing the tests for distinguishing them, their linguistic properties, and the main theories on their semantics. We then offer an overview of their cognitive implications: the data on acquisition, the hypothesis that they are automatic generalizations, their relation to essentialism, and the inferential asymmetry characterizing their interpretation. We conclude with the debate concerning the role of generics in fostering discrimination.

Generics express generalizations in the linguistic form «Ks are F», where K denotes a category or its members and F a property (for instance, «Tigers are striped» or «Women are emotional»). Generics seem to play a key role in fostering the belief that the members of certain categories share properties and dispositions due to a supposed common essence. It has then been argued that generics concerning discriminated social categories are especially insidious because they could favor prejudice on the same. However, it is still debated whether generics lead to essentialize more than quantified generalizations, such as «Most Ks are F». In this paper, we argue that we nonetheless have good reasons to consider generics as more problematic than quantified generalizations: if, on the one hand, there is no conclusive evidence that generics and quantified sentences lead to essentialize to a different extent, on the other hand, generics are particularly difficult to counter. Moreover, the properties predicated in generics are interpreted as widespread even though generics are also accepted based on limited evidence. This asymmetry in the interpretation of generics highlights a distinctive mechanism through which stereotypes can be transmitted and proliferate.

Generics have been a vividly debated topic since the 1970s. Several aspects make them especially interesting, from their ubiquity to their tricky truth-conditions, from their distinctive cognitive implications to their (still debated) harmfulness in the social domain. This annotated bibliography aims to provide a guide to the massive scholarship on generics ranging through different fields. In linguistics and philosophy of language, generics are subject to inquiries for a number of reasons (see Linguistic Overviews). First, no one specific element in the linguistic surface identifies generics and, thus, a primary goal of a theory of generics is to provide a way to clearly distinguish them from nongeneric sentences. This enterprise includes providing a definition as well as tests for genericity (see Foundational Works on Genericity). Moreover, a vast number of theorists have attempted to specify the truth-conditions of generic sentences by appealing to semantic and pragmatic mechanisms (see Semantic Accounts, Pragmatic Accounts, and Normative Generics and Definitions). This task, however, has proven especially challenging, to the point that none of the theories proposed to date can account for the full range of data. Generics are further at the center of research programs in psychology revolving around their role in human cognition. Generics are a common means of expressing generalizations. They are further central to the development and shaping of our conceptual knowledge. A variety of developmental data show that generics are early acquired (see Acquisition of Generic Language). To account for this evidence, it has been hypothesized that generics express cognitively default generalizations (see Generics as Default Generalizations). Such a hypothesis led to several predictions, some of which found empirical support. Furthermore, several empirical studies investigated the relation between generics and essentialism, a cognitive bias that leads to believe that the members of certain categories share properties and dispositions due to a common essence (see Essentialism). Other studies concerned a distinctive asymmetry characterizing generics: they are taken to express broad generalizations but are, at the same time, accepted based on relatively weak evidence (see Inferential Asymmetry). Together with prior theorizing, these findings sparked a debate over the potential harmfulness of social generics, i.e., generics concerning social categories (see Detrimental Effects of Social Generics). In philosophy, the discussion revolves around the question of whether generics are especially harmful compared to other means of expressing generalizations, whether there are circumstances in which the use of social generics is useful, and how to effectively counter them to prevent their possible harmful effects (see Debate on the Use of Social Generics). In recent years, moreover, some scholars started exploring the use and interpretation of generics in the scientific domain (see Generics in Scientific Communication). For this work, Federico Cella was funded by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia under project UIDP/00183/2020 while he was a postdoc fellow at the NOVA Institute of Philosophy (NOVA University of Lisbon).

Slurs are offensive expressions targeting individuals on the basis of their membership to certain social groups. Some authors have argued that the offensiveness of slurs is related to the semantic encoding of stereotypes in their meaning. As noticed by Robin Jeshion (2011, 2013a, 2013b), the stereotypical strategies do not seem to provide a satisfactory analysis of slurs’ functional traits. Herein, I propose to modify her view by making a distinction between two offensive dimensions of slurs: a negative expressive component encoded in the semantic content and directed toward a certain group of individuals, and the social generics related to that group conveyed as conversational implicatures.

Generics (e.g., “Ravens are black”) express generalizations about categories or their members. Previous research found that generics about animals are interpreted as broadly true of members of a kind, yet also accepted based on minimal evidence. This asymmetry is important for suggesting a mechanism by which unfounded generalizations may flourish; yet, little is known whether this finding extends to generics about groups of people (heretofore, “social generics”). Accordingly, in four preregistered studies (n = 665), we tested for an inferential asymmetry for generics regarding novel groups of animals versus people. Participants were randomly assigned to either an Implied Prevalence task (given a generic, asked to estimate the prevalence of a property) or a Truth-Conditions task (given prevalence information, asked whether a generic was true or false). A generic asymmetry was found in both domains, at equivalent levels. The asymmetry also extended to properties varying in valence (dangerous and neutral). Finally, there were differences as a function of property valence in the Implied Prevalence task and a small but consistent interaction between domain and prevalence in the Truth-Conditions task. We discuss the implications of these results for the semantics of generics, theoretical accounts of the asymmetry, and the relation between generics and stereotyping.

In this paper, we argue that, although neglected so far, there is a strong link between generics and testimonial injustice. Testimonial injustice is a form of epistemic injustice that “occurs when prejudice causes a hearer to give a deflated level of credibility to a speaker’s word”. Generics are sentences that express generalizations about a category or about its members without specifying what proportion of the category members possess the predicated property. We argue that generics are especially suited to cause testimonial injustice for three reasons. First, generics elicit an “inferential asymmetry” :1452–1482, 2010). That is, generics are accepted even if only a few individuals possess the predicated property but are, nonetheless, taken to refer to almost all the members of the category. This peculiar combination makes generics particularly apt to cause testimonial injustice. High resistance to counter-evidence is a crucial feature of prejudice, the cause of testimonial injustice, and the more highly predictive a generalization the more it will be employed in concrete situations, leading to instances of testimonial injustice. Second, generics seem to play a key role in leading people to develop essentialist beliefs : 273–301, 2010; Rhodes et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci 109: 13526–13531, 2012). Subjects holding such beliefs treat categories as warranting strong generaliations over their members. Therefore, they will be more likely to rely on prejudice while dealing with the category members. Finally, generics are outstandingly common in everyday speech. Hence, their noxious effects are amplified by their diffusion and should not be underestimated.