Psychological essentialist reasoning and perspective taking during reading: a donkey is not a zebra, but a plate can...

In an eyetracking study, we examined whether readers use psychological essentialist reasoning and perspective taking online. Stories were presented in which an animal or an artifact was transformed into another animal (e.g., a donkey into a zebra) or artifact (e.g., a plate into a clock). According to psychological essentialism, the essence of the animal did not change in these stories, while the transformed artifact would be thought to have changed categories. We found evidence that readers use this kind of reasoning online: When reference was made to the transformed animal, the nontransformed term ("donkey") was preferred, but the opposite held for the transformed artifact ("clock" was read faster than "plate"). The immediacy of the effect suggests that this kind of reasoning is employed automatically. Perspective taking was examined within the same stories by the introduction of a novel story character. This character, who was naïve about the transformation, commented on the transformed animal or artifact. If the reader were to take this character's perspective immediately and exclusively for reference solving, then only the transformed term ("zebra" or "clock") would be felicitous. However, the results suggested that while this character's perspective could be taken into account, it seems difficult to completely discard one's own perspective at the same time.