Susan Gelman

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.

This chapter argues that human conceptual biases can shed light on metaphysical matters. Experimental studies of psychological essentialism reveal persistent biases and distortions starting in childhood and continuing through to adulthood. These biases include underestimating variability within a kind, viewing category boundaries as objectively correct, and assuming a causal essence shared among members of a kind. These assumptions clash with scientific discoveries post-Darwin, thus constituting a deflationary account of essentialism as a theory of how the world is structured. Further, given the reach and persistence of essentialist biases in human reasoning, even the categories of scientists may fall prey to these same errors. Ironically, the realism embedded in essentialism may pose one of the biggest obstacles to achieving a direct perspective on the natural world.

This chapter examines associationist models of cognitive development, focusing on the development of naming in young children — the process by which young children learn of construct the meanings of words and concepts. It presents two early-emerging insights that children possess about the nature of naming. These insights are: (1) essentialism: certain words map onto nonobvious, underlying causal features (e.g., dogs are alike in internal and subtle respects, even if they look quite different on the surface), and (2) genericity: certain expressions map onto generic kinds (e.g., dogs as an abstract category) as opposed to particular instances (e.g., one or more specific dogs). The chapter discusses empirical studies with preschool children to support the contention that essentialism and genericity emerge early in development and that neither insight is directly taught. It also explores the question of whether these insights can be derived wholly from a direct reading of cues that are ‘out there’in the world, and concludes that they cannot. The implications of these findings for innateness are then considered. It is argued that both essentialism and genericity provide cues regarding plausible candidates for innate conceptual knowledge in children.

It is observed that children acquire generic concepts with ease, despite being given ambiguous and insufficient evidence. Although this seems of a piece with general issues that arise in word learning—itself an instance of the classic problem of induction—there are many further peculiarities in the case of generics. Children start using generics between two and three years of age, and this capacity to understand them so early suggests that the input of particular types of generics might be the way that children's concepts and knowledge are shaped. The picture, then, is that children seem to possess kind concepts beforehand that permit the early acquisition of generic noun phrases. A number of ways in which one could investigate this hypothesis are sketched.

Core to our moral sense is that we have obligations toward others, such that we are expected to curb self-interests in light of obligations to other individuals and society at large. But do we also have obligations to ourselves? Motivated by this underexplored question in moral psychology, we conducted six studies (N = 1,860) to systematically investigate how people view obligations to the self. Study 1 found that most participants endorsed the idea of obligations to the self, providing examples such as preserving physical and mental health. Study 2 found that, like obligations to others, people distinguished violations of self-obligations from personal preferences or social conventions, and judged them as wrong regardless of external authority or majority behavior. Study 3 demonstrated this tendency even in the case of a socially isolated agent, suggesting self-obligations are not reducible to obligations to others. Study 4 showed that people judged that both self- and other-related obligations justified a moral transgression, more so than personal preferences, goals, or social conventions. Studies 5 and 6 revealed that perceived harmfulness to the self is a key mechanism in shaping whether people judge an act to be owed to the self. Together, these findings highlight obligations to the self as an important category in our moral framework, offering a deeper understanding of the role of self-interest in morality

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.

The present study investigated children's understanding that an object's history may increase its significance, an appreciation that underpins the concept of historical authenticity (i.e., the idea that an item's history determines its true identity, beyond its functional or material qualities, leading people to value real items over copies or fakes). We examined the development of historical significance through the lens of parent–child conversations, and children's performance on an authenticity assessment. The final sample was American, 79.2% monoracial White, and mid-high socio-economic status (SES) and included 48 parent–child pairs: 24 with younger children (R = 3.5 to 4.5 years) and 24 with older children (R = 5.5 to 6.5 years). Parent–child pairs discussed three books we created, with three storylines: a museum (culturally authentic) storyline, a clean-up (personally authentic) storyline, and a control storyline. Across measures, conversations suggested that authenticity may begin as a “placeholder concept” that is initially rooted in a broad appreciation for the significance of old objects and only later filled in with specifics. This placeholder initially directs children's learning about authenticity by linking, in an unspecified way, the value and significance of objects to their past. For example, we found that young children appropriately appealed to history (vs. perceptual or functional features of objects) in contexts regarding authentic objects but struggled in determining which objects were more significant on the post-test assessment, suggesting that they attend to object history but are not yet sure how histories matter for making authenticity judgments. We also found some evidence that directing children's attention toward conceptual information related to object history may in turn direct them away from material or perceptual considerations, as seen in trade-offs in parents’ and children's conversations. Together, this exploratory report offers many new avenues for work on the development of authenticity concepts in childhood.

Mind-body dualism conceptualizes mind and body as distinct, but there are different ways that dualism may be instantiated. In this study, we examined how Hierarchical Dualism (the belief that mind and body are distinct, and the mind is superior) and Mutual-Influence Dualism (the belief that mind and body are separate but interrelate) related to health behaviors and mental health in three student samples: exclusively queer, exclusively straight, and a mixed university subject pool (N = 535). Participants in each sample endorsed Mutual-Influence Dualism at a higher rate than Hierarchical Dualism. Mutual-Influence dualism was consistently associated with greater engagement in health-promoting behaviors and greater well-being, whereas Hierarchical Dualism differed by sample. These results suggest that dualist beliefs do not uniformly shape the lives of those who hold them: rather, the relation between dualist beliefs and health differs as a function of the type of dualism and the identities we hold.

Psychological essentialism is the belief that some internal, unseen essence or force determines the common outward appearances and behaviors of category members. We investigated whether reasoning about transplants of bodily elements showed evidence of essentialist thinking. Both Americans and Indians endorsed the possibility of transplants conferring donors' personality, behavior, and luck on recipients, consistent with essentialism. Respondents also endorsed essentialist effects even when denying that transplants would change a recipient's category membership (e.g., predicting that a recipient of a pig's heart would act more pig-like but denying that the recipient would become a pig). This finding runs counter to predictions from the strongest version of the “minimalist” position (Strevens,2000), an alternative to essentialism. Finally, studies asking about a broader range of donor-to-recipient transfers indicated that Indians essentialized more types of transfers than Americans, but neither sample essentialized monetary transfer. This suggests that results from bodily transplant conditions reflect genuine essentialism rather than broader magical thinking

For adults, ownership is a concept that rests on principles and connections that apply broadly – whether the owner is the self or someone else, and whether the self is giver or receiver. The present studies tested whether preschool children likewise treat ownership in this abstract fashion. In Experiment 1, 20 children and 24 adults were assigned to be either “givers” or “receivers.” They were then asked to identify which items they and the researcher owned. In Experiment 2, 20 children and 24 adults were asked which items they and the experimenter liked best. In both experiments, participants’ judgments were not influenced by their role, but were more adult-like when reasoning about self-owned than other-owned objects. These data suggest that intuitions about property ownership are initially egocentric – biased toward linking objects to one’s self – and then extend to others over the course of development.

Disease transmission is a fruitful domain in which to examine how scientific and folk theories interrelate, given laypeople’s access to multiple sources of information to explain events of personal significance. The current paper reports an in-depth survey of U.S. adults’ causal reasoning about two viral illnesses: a novel, deadly disease that has massively disrupted everyone’s lives, and a familiar, innocuous disease that has essentially no serious consequences. Participants received a series of closed-ended and open-ended questions probing their reasoning about disease transmission, with a focus on causal mechanisms underlying disease contraction, transmission, treatment, and prevention; non-visible biological processes; and ontological frameworks regarding what kinds of entities viruses are. We also assessed participants’ attitudes, such as their trust in scientific experts and willingness to be vaccinated. Results indicated complexity in people’s reasoning, consistent with the co-existence of multiple explanatory frameworks. An understanding of viral transmission and viral replication existed alongside folk theories, placeholder beliefs, and lack of differentiation between viral and non-viral disease. For example, roughly 40% of participants who explained illness in terms of the transmission of viruses also endorsed a non-viral folk theory, such as exposure to cold weather or special foods as curative. Additionally, participants made use of competing modes of construal when explaining how viruses operate, such as framing the immune system response as cells trying to fight off the virus. Indeed, participants who displayed greater knowledge about viral transmission were significantly more likely to anthropomorphize bodily processes. Although comparisons of COVID-19 and the common cold revealed relatively few differences, the latter, more familiar disease elicited consistently lower levels of accuracy and greater reliance on folk theories. Moreover, for COVID-19 in particular, accuracy positively correlated with attitudes, self-protective behaviors, and willingness to be vaccinated. For both diseases, self-assessed knowledge about the disease negatively predicted accuracy. The results are discussed in relation to challenges for formal models of explanatory reasoning.

The learning style myth is a commonly held myth that matching instruction to a student's “learning style” will result in improved learning, while providing mismatched instruction will result in suboptimal learning. The present study used a short online reasoning exercise about the efficacy of multimodal instruction to investigate the nature of learning styles beliefs. We aimed to: understand how learning style beliefs interact with beliefs about multimodal learning; characterize the potential complexity of learning style beliefs and understand how this short exercise might influence endorsements of learning styles. Many participants who believed in the learning style myth supported the efficacy of multimodal learning, and many were willing to revise their belief in the myth after the exercise. Personal experiences and worldviews were commonly cited as reasons for maintaining beliefs in learning styles. Findings reveal the complexity of learning style beliefs, and how they interact with evidence in previously undocumented ways.

Linguistic form and conceptual level both play a role in the structure of adult lexical hierarchies. The present studies examined how these factors might affect acquisition. In their linguistic form, labels can be single nouns or compound nouns. In conceptual level, categories can be structured at the basic, superordinate, or subordinate levels. Both of these factors were varied in two experiments, in which 133 children, aged 2;11 to 5;11, were taught novel lexical hierarchies. As predicted, compound nouns were easier to learn than single nouns, especially at the subordinate level. Age of child and category level influenced the kinds of errors children made. The most common error was to treat hierarchically related words as labeling mutually exclusive subsets, so that terms from different levels contrasted at the same level. Both factors--linguistic form and conceptual level--influenced children's learning of new lexical hierarchies.

Money can take many forms—a coin or a bill, a payment for an automobile or a prize for an award, a piece from the 1989 series or the 2019 series, and so on—but despite this, money is designed to represent an amount and only that. Thus, a dollar is a dollar, in the sense that money is fungible. But when adults ordinarily think about money, they think about it in terms of its source, and in particular, its moral source (e.g., dirty money). Here we investigate the development of the belief that money carries traces of its moral history. We study children ages 5–6 and 8–9, who are sensitive to both object history and morality, and thus possess the component pieces needed to think that a dollar may not be like any other. Across three principal studies (and three additional studies in Appendix S1; N = 327; 219 five‐ and six‐year‐olds; 108 eight‐ and nine‐year‐olds), we find that children are less likely to want money with negative moral history, a pattern that was stronger and more consistent among 8‐ and 9‐year‐olds than 5‐ and 6‐year‐olds. These findings highlight pressing directions for future research that could help shed light on the mechanisms that contribute to the belief that money carries traces of its moral history.

Essentialism is the idea that certain categories, such as "dog," "man," or "intelligence," have an underlying reality or true nature that gives objects their identity. Where does this idea come from? In this book, Susan Gelman argues that essentialism is an early cognitive bias. Young children's concepts reflect a deep commitment to essentialism, and this commitment leads children to look beyond the obvious in many converging ways: when learning words, generalizing knowledge to new category members, reasoning about the insides of things, contemplating the role of nature versus nurture, and constructing causal explanations. Gelman argues against the standard view of children as concrete or focused on the obvious, instead claiming that children have an early, powerful tendency to search for hidden, non-obvious features of things. She also attacks claims that children build up their knowledge of the world based on simple, associative learning strategies, arguing that children's concepts are embedded in rich folk theories. Parents don't explicitly teach children to essentialize; instead, during the preschool years, children spontaneously construct concepts and beliefs that reflect an essentialist bias.Essentialist accounts have been offered, in one form or another, for thousands of years, extending back at least to Aristotle and Plato. Yet this book is the first to address the issues surrounding essentialism from a psychological perspective. Gelman synthesizes over 15 years of empirical research on essentialism into a unified framework and explores the broader lessons that the research imparts concerning, among other things, human concepts, children's thinking, and the ways in which language influences thought. This volume will appeal to developmental, cognitive, and social psychologists, as well as to scholars in cognitive science and philosophy.

Adults report that moral characteristics—particularly widely shared moral beliefs—are central to identity. This perception appears driven by the view that changes to widely shared moral beliefs would alter friendships and that this change in social relationships would, in turn, alter an individual's personal identity. Because reasoning about identity changes substantially during adolescence, the current work tested pre- and post-adolescents to reveal the role that such changes could play in moral cognition. Experiment 1 showed that 8- to 10-year-olds, like adults, judged that people would change more after changes to their widely shared moral beliefs (e.g., whether hitting is wrong) than after changes to controversial moral beliefs (e.g., whether telling prosocial lies is wrong). Following up on this basic effect, a second experiment examined whether participants regard all changes to widely shared moral beliefs as equally impactful. Adults, but not children, reported that individuals would change more if their good moral beliefs (e.g., it is not okay to hit) transformed into bad moral beliefs (e.g., it is okay to hit) than if the opposite change occurred. This difference in adults was mediated by perceptions of how much changes to each type of belief would alter friendships. We discuss implications for moral judgment and social cognitive development.

Previous research shows that Multiracial adults are categorized as more Black than White, especially when they have angry facial expressions. The present research examined the extent to which these categorization patterns extended to Multiracial children, with both White and Black participants. Consistent with past research, both White and Black participants categorized Multiracial children as more Black than White. Counter to what was found with Multiracial adults in previous research, emotional expressions did not moderate how Multiracial children were categorized. Additionally, for Black participants, anti-White bias was correlated with categorizing Multiracial children as more White than Black. The developmental and cultural implications of these data are discussed, as they provide new insight into the important role that age plays in Multiracial person perception.

The understanding that people can own certain things is essential for activities such as trading, lending, sharing, and use of currency. In two studies, children in grades K, 2 and 4 (N=118) and adults (N=40) were asked to identify whether four kinds of individuals could be owners: typical humans, non-human animals, artifacts, and atypical humans (e.g., individuals who were sleeping or unable to move). Participants in all age groups attributed ownership to typical humans most often, non-human animals less often, and artifacts least often. In a third study, children and adults (N=240) attributed property rights to individuals who were awake, asleep, or tied up, but children continued to deny that these rights extend to atypical humans. Although both children and adults use an ontological boundary to guide their ownership attributions, concepts of owners change significantly over the course of development.

Authentic objects are those that have a historical link to a person, event, time, or place of some significance. The current study examines everyday beliefs about authentic objects, with three primary goals: to determine the scope of adults' evaluation of authentic objects, to examine such evaluation in two distinct cultural settings, and to determine whether a person's attachment history predicts evaluation of authentic objects. We found that college students in the UK and the USA consistently evaluate a broad range of authentic items as more valuable than matched control objects, more desirable to keep, and more desirable to touch, though only non-personal authentic items were judged to be more appropriate for display in a museum. These patterns were remarkably similar across the two cultural contexts. Additionally, those who had an attachment object as a child evaluated objects more favorably, and in particular judged authentic objects to be more valuable. Altogether, these results demonstrate broad endorsement of "positive contagion" among college-educated adults.