Recently in the sister blog:
Generic language, that is, language that refers to a category as an abstract whole (e.g., ‘Girls like pink’) rather than specific individuals (e.g., ‘This girl likes pink’), is a common means by which children learn about social kinds. Here, we propose that children interpret generics as signaling that their referenced categories are natural, objective, and have distinctive features, and, thus, in the social domain, that such language affects children’s beliefs about the social world in ways that extend far beyond the content they explicitly communicate. On this account, even generics expressing uncontentious content (e.g., ‘Girls are great at math’) can lead children to think of categories as defining fundamentally distinct kinds of people and contribute to the development of stereotypes and other problematic social phenomena.
Andrew:
I don’t understand the reason for this post. Am I missing something?
John
Andrew calls it the “sister blog” because it literally is the blog of his sister. He links to her work from time to time.
Thanks for sharing, this is a great overview of this topic! In particular, I see this as another example of the kinds of learning mechanisms that give rise to categorical perception effects in other domains, like color vision. An important function of learning is to enable differentiation of ambiguous environmental signals in such a way that an organism can efficiently decide how to respond. The late Roger Shepard referred to this as dividing experience into different “consequential regions”. Sometimes those regions are defined by feedback from the physical environment (eg, berries with certain colors make you sick, while those with other colors are fine), but other times they are defined by feedback from the social environment, as in the linked article.
It occurs to me that scientists are subject to the same biases. By labeling an effect or phenomenon, we may come to believe that it is a “natural” category independent of our labeling. For example, the concept of the “aether” took a long time to abandon because scientists thought it was their job to explain what it was. The eugenicists believed in “races” as natural categories too, although rather than try to explain them, they used them as explanatory tools. Obviously, as long as humans use language, we will need to come up with labels, my point is just that the use of a label is not sufficient to establish whether the category it defines is useful beyond its social or communicative function.
This stuff annoys me to bits.
To start, sentences like “Despite the clarity of the conceptual distinction, determining whether a given utterance is generic is complex.” already possibly underlines my troubles with this type of research and paper, and all the jargon or terms like “essentialist” and “generic” makes reading for me hard as these terms mean little to me and I have to look them up every time I come across them in long and complicated sentences.
So, naturally I will react in a similar way as I did when I had to read papers where I encountered similar issues when I had to make an exam assignment at university. I will just focus on one specific, very particular, part or example to try and understand, whilst making clear why I dislike this stuff so much.
For instance, “Thus, by choosing to utter a generic, the speaker signals an intention to communicate a particular view of the category and its features, namely that the speaker views it as an abstract, objective, and coherent kind that supports generalizations [28,32].” seems to fit with a sentence like “A scientist cares about the truth”. Now, what I don’t understand is why the authors write about this all in the way they do (“Generics often sound innocuous (e.g., ‘Girls wear pink’), but (…)”.
Like, what should one take from this paper? Should one not utter a sentence like “a scientist cares about the truth” to a child as a way to generally make clear what a scientist’s job is, or what they likely value? Should I wonder how it would even be possible to teach children things about reality, or about a particular society, when taking into account every possible exception to the rule, or every possible way in which something might not be or act in they way it usually is or acts?
I don’t get it…But I don’t have to. I can just say no to this.