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
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 informs theories of social
essentialism.