Perceived danger associated with a property modulates cross category generalization

Identifying projectable predicates is a key issue in understanding inductive inference. It is proposed that looking into the evolutionary psychology literature for adaptive properties may be one useful approach. One hypothesis that emerges from this literature is that properties that signal danger or harm should be more salient than properties that do not. Two studies are carried out to test this hypothesis. In study 1 participants were presented with a scenario involving the discovery of novel animals, for which there was incomplete information. Three types of properties (a harmful property, a neutral property, a beneficial property) were associated with animals in one (base) category and participants were asked to indicate strength of generalization of the property to a target within the category, and to a target across to another category. In the second experiment, the procedure was repeated, but in addition, subjects were also explicitly asked to indicate whether the base and target belonged to the same or different categories. Study 1 showed that the harmful property was more projectable compared to the beneficial and neutral properties. Study 2 reconfirmed this and further showed that it also promoted excessive generalization across categories. The results suggest that examination of adaptations identified by evolutionary psychologists may be a useful source of insight in the study of inductive inference.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11571-022-09793-3.