Tell me your (cognitive) budget, and I'll tell you what you value

Consider the following two (hypothetical) generic causal claims: "Living in a neighborhood with many families with children increases purchases of bicycles" and "living in an affluent neighborhood with many families with children increases purchases of bicycles." These claims not only differ in what they suggest about how bicycle ownership is distributed across different neighborhoods (i.e., "the data"), but also have the potential to communicate something about the speakers' values: namely, the prominence they accord to affluence in representing and making decisions about the social world. Here, we examine the relationship between the level of granularity with which a cause is described in a generic causal claim (e.g., neighborhood vs. affluent neighborhood) and the value of the information contained in the causal model that generates that claim. We argue that listeners who know any two of the following can make reliable inferences about the third: 1) the level of granularity at which a speaker makes a generic causal claim, 2) the speaker's values, and 3) the data available to the speaker. We present results of four experiments (N = 1323) in the domain of social categories that provide evidence in keeping with these predictions.

Generic Language for Social and Animal Kinds: An Examination of the Asymmetry Between Acceptance and Inferences

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 influence of language input on 3-year-olds' learning about novel social categories

There is considerable variability in the social categories that children essentialize and the types of expectations children form about these categories, suggesting children's essentialist beliefs are shaped by environmental input. Prior studies have shown that exposure to generic statements about a social category promotes essentialist beliefs in 4.5- to 8-year-old children. However, by this age children form essentialist beliefs quite robustly, and thus it is unclear whether generic statements impact children's expectations about social categories at younger ages when essentialist beliefs first begin to emerge. Moreover, in prior studies the generic statements were delivered by an experimenter and carefully controlled, and thus it is unclear whether these statements would have the same impact if they occurred in a somewhat less constrained setting, such as parents reading a picture book to their child. The current study addressed these open questions by investigating whether generic statements delivered during a picture-book interaction with their parents influenced 3-year-olds' expectations about members of a novel social category. Our results showed that children who heard generic statements during the picture-book interaction used social-group membership to make inferences about the likely behavior of a novel category member, whereas children who were not exposed to generic statements did not. These findings suggest that as early as 3 years of age, children's expectations about social categories are influenced by generic statements that occur during brief parent-child interactions.

Challenging categorical thinking: A mixed methods approach to explaining health inequalities

"Categorical thinking" in social science research has been widely criticised by feminist scholars for conceptualising social categories as natural, de-contextualised, and internally homogeneous. This paper develops and applies a mixed-methods approach to the study of health inequalities, using social categories meaningfully in order to challenge categorical thinking. The approach is demonstrated through a case study of socio-economic (SES) inequalities in maternal healthcare access in Zambia. This paper's approach responds to the research agenda set by intersectional social epidemiologists by considering potential heterogeneity within categories, but also by exploring the context-specific meaning of categories, examining explanations at multiple levels, and interpreting results according to mutually constitutive social processes. The study finds that meso-level institutions, "health service environments", explain a large share of SES inequalities in maternal healthcare access. Women's work, marital status, and levels of "autonomy" have heterogeneous implications for healthcare access across SES categories. Disadvantaged categories and their reproductive behaviours are stigmatised as 'backwards', in contrast to advantaged categories and their behaviours, which are associated with 'modernity' and 'development'. Challenging categorical thinking has important implications for social justice and health, by rejecting framings of a specific category as problematic or non-compliant, highlighting the possibility of change, and emphasising the political and structural nature of progress.

The development of essentialist, ethnic, and civic intuitions about national categories

Given current global migration patterns, understanding of children's intuitions about nationality and national categories is an important and emerging focus for developmental psychologists. We review theoretical and empirical work on three different types of intuition: (1) that nationality is primarily determined by ancestry (an ethnic intuition); (2) that nationality is determined by commitment to national institutions (a civic intuition); and (3) that membership in a national category is determined by possession of an invisible essence which explains the similarities between members of that category. We examine assumptions about the relations which hold between all three intuitions and derive a series of questions about how these intuitions develop, how they relate to each other, and how they might be affected by children's experience. We describe a study (N=196) suggesting that (1) most children, regardless of experience, possess elements of both ethnic and civic intuitions, and (2) essentialist intuitions about national categories decrease with age and are not associated with ethnic intuitions. We conclude by outlining the implications of these results and a number of important questions which they raise.

Groups as institutions: The use of constitutive rules to attribute group membership

Across four experiments we tested children's (N = 229, aged 4-9) beliefs about what makes an individual a member of a group. One model (groups as institutions) predicts children believe groups are based on constitutive rules, i.e. collectively agreed-upon rules that ground membership. Another model (groups as social network) predicts children believe groups are based on patterns of social relationships. We tested whether and to what extent children rely on constitutive rules to attribute group membership. We found that young children can reason about constitutive rules as a means of becoming a group member, and their reasoning about constitutive rules is relatively sophisticated (Studies 1-3). But, when constitutive rules are pitted against friendship, young children (4-5) prioritize friendship and older children (6-9) prioritize constitutive rules. Therefore, both models contribute to the understanding of children's concepts of social groups across development.

Evaluative implications of intersecting body weight and other social categories: The role of typicality

Body weight is a critical dimension by which we evaluate others, with heavier individuals facing higher levels of stigma and discrimination compared to thinner individuals. Yet, the perception of body weight can be ambiguous, suggesting that stereotypic associations and heuristics influence which bodies are deemed as "typical" for a particular group or social category. Here, we investigate whether interdependent associations between body weight and social category dimensions (ethnicity, gender, age, and sex) affect the typicality ratings of a heavier body. Specifically, we hypothesize that heavier bodies labelled as Asian, feminine, younger, or female, compared to Black, White, masculine, older, or male, will be rated less typical and these typicality judgments will mediate social evaluations. Participants made typicality and social evaluative judgments about a wireframe body with a set BMI of 38, accompanied by one of sixteen category labels (e.g., Asian man). Our results show that typicality judgments broadly align with our hypotheses and mediate social evaluations of the heavier body. Overall, we showcase the interdependent nature of weight and other social categories, highlighting the role of typicality for social evaluations of heavier targets.

The rare preference effect: Statistical information influences social affiliation judgments

Shared preferences-liking the same things-facilitate and strengthen bonds between individuals. However, not all shared preferences are equally meaningful; sharing a rare preference with someone is often more exciting and meaningful than sharing a common preference. Here we present evidence for the rare preference effect: Participants chose to interact with (Experiment 1), and endorsed interactions between (Experiment 2), individuals who shared a rare preference, rather than those who shared a common preference, and this tendency increased with the relative rarity of the preference. While having a preference usually implies knowing and liking something, the presence of shared knowledge alone was sufficient to give rise to the rare preference effect (Experiments 3 & 4). Further, we find that social affiliation judgments are modulated by the causal process by which individuals came to have shared knowledge: Participants preferred to interact with someone who acquired a shared preference deliberately rather than accidentally (Experiment 5). In addition to the many cultural and emotional factors that drive mutual attraction, these results suggest that people's decisions about with whom to interact are systematically influenced by the statistics of the social environment.