When Do Generics Feel Justifiable? A Registered Report Bridging Key Theories

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Science
• Social Psychology
• Linguistics

Background:

• Bare plural generics attribute features to categories without quantifying members.
• Generic statements can perpetuate stereotypes and misinformation.
• Disagreement exists on criteria for justifying generic statements, with pragmatic and statistical theories proposed.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare predictions of pragmatic and statistical theories of generic justification.
• To investigate cognitive mechanisms underlying the judgment of generic statements.
• To examine how feature dangerousness, absolute prevalence, and relative prevalence influence generic justifiability.

Main Methods:

• A registered within-participants study was conducted.
• Participants judged the justifiability of generics attributed to fictitious groups.
• Feature dangerousness, absolute prevalence, and relative prevalence were independently manipulated.

Main Results:

• The study design allowed for testing divergent predictions from pragmatic and statistical theories.
• Specific patterns of main and interaction effects were analyzed to evaluate theories.
• The relative merit of influential theories on generic reasoning was examined.

Conclusions:

• The findings elucidate the cognitive mechanisms underlying generic justifiability.
• This research contributes to understanding how people reason with and justify generic statements.
• The study provides insights into the interplay of pragmatic and statistical factors in generic language use.