{"id":{"repo_id":"uiuc","oai_identifier":"oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/93015"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/uiuc/oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/93015","repository":{"repo_id":"uiuc","name":"University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign","base_url":"https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh"},"display":{"title":"A general explanatory tendency underlies common assumptions about how the world works: an investigation of nominal fit and essentialist beliefs","abstract":"\"People are constantly making sense of their environment, explaining a wide variety of events and facts that they encounter. Often, these explanations are the product of a heuristic process that relies on highly accessible information to make sense of a phenomenon (Cimpian & Salomon, 2014a, 2014b; Thomas, Dougherty, Sprenger, & Harbison, 2008). Importantly, highly accessible information is often skewed to include features inherent to that which is being reasoned about, without reference to external impact or happenstance. Because of this bias in highly accessible information, generating explanations heuristically has downstream consequences for the beliefs people hold about the way the world works. Here, I focus on two beliefs that I propose are underlain by inherent reasoning. In Part 1, six studies provide evidence that children's and adults' inherent reasoning promotes a belief that words and their referents are not arbitrarily paired but rather \"\"fit\"\" particularly well together (nominal fit). In Part 2, I provide evidence across three studies that inherent reasoning may also play a role in the development of essentialist beliefs. Overall, this work suggests that general inherent reasoning buttresses disparate beliefs about the way the world works. These findings highlight the value in investigating the ways in which abstract, higher-order judgments and beliefs are shaped by basic cognitive processes.\"","abstract_html":""People are constantly making sense of their environment, explaining a wide variety of events and facts that they encounter. Often, these explanations are the product of a heuristic process that relies on highly accessible information to make sense of a phenomenon (Cimpian & Salomon, 2014a, 2014b; Thomas, Dougherty, Sprenger, & Harbison, 2008). Importantly, highly accessible information is often skewed to include features inherent to that which is being reasoned about, without reference to external impact or happenstance. Because of this bias in highly accessible information, generating explanations heuristically has downstream consequences for the beliefs people hold about the way the world works. Here, I focus on two beliefs that I propose are underlain by inherent reasoning. In Part 1, six studies provide evidence that children's and adults' inherent reasoning promotes a belief that words and their referents are not arbitrarily paired but rather ""fit"" particularly well together (nominal fit). In Part 2, I provide evidence across three studies that inherent reasoning may also play a role in the development of essentialist beliefs. Overall, this work suggests that general inherent reasoning buttresses disparate beliefs about the way the world works. These findings highlight the value in investigating the ways in which abstract, higher-order judgments and beliefs are shaped by basic cognitive processes."","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Sutherland, Shelbie"],"institution":"University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign","degree_name":"Ph.D.","degree_level":"Dissertation","degree_discipline":"Psychology","degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":["Cimpian, Andrei","Baillargeon, Renée","Fisher, Cynthia","Benjamin, Aaron","Hummel, John"],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2016,"date_issued":"2016-11-10T18:39:11Z","date_published":"2016-11-10T18:39:11Z","updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:26:35Z","subjects":["explanation","heuristics","inherence heuristic","nominal fit","essentialism","conceptual development"],"languages":["en"],"rights":["Copyright 2016 Shelbie Sutherland"],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[]},"links":{"outbound_url":"http://hdl.handle.net/2142/93015","outbound_label":"Handle","outbound_source":"dc:identifier"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor","label":"Contributor","values":["Cimpian, Andrei","Baillargeon, Renée","Fisher, Cynthia","Benjamin, Aaron","Hummel, John"]},{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Sutherland, Shelbie"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date","label":"Dc Date","values":["2016-11-10T18:39:11Z","2018-11-11T10:15:45Z","2016-06-27","2016-08"]},{"key":"dc:type","label":"Dc Type","values":["text"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_discipline","label":"Discipline","values":["Psychology"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_level","label":"Degree Level","values":["Dissertation"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_name","label":"Degree Name","values":["Ph.D."]},{"key":"thesis:institution_name","label":"Thesis Institution Name","values":["University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["explanation","heuristics","inherence heuristic","nominal fit","essentialism","conceptual development"]}]},{"id":"language_rights","label":"Language and Rights","entries":[{"key":"dc:language","label":"Dc Language","values":["en"]},{"key":"dc:rights","label":"Dc Rights","values":["Copyright 2016 Shelbie Sutherland"]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["http://hdl.handle.net/2142/93015"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description","label":"Description","values":["\"People are constantly making sense of their environment, explaining a wide variety of events and facts that they encounter. Often, these explanations are the product of a heuristic process that relies on highly accessible information to make sense of a phenomenon (Cimpian & Salomon, 2014a, 2014b; Thomas, Dougherty, Sprenger, & Harbison, 2008). Importantly, highly accessible information is often skewed to include features inherent to that which is being reasoned about, without reference to external impact or happenstance. Because of this bias in highly accessible information, generating explanations heuristically has downstream consequences for the beliefs people hold about the way the world works. Here, I focus on two beliefs that I propose are underlain by inherent reasoning. In Part 1, six studies provide evidence that children's and adults' inherent reasoning promotes a belief that words and their referents are not arbitrarily paired but rather \"\"fit\"\" particularly well together (nominal fit). In Part 2, I provide evidence across three studies that inherent reasoning may also play a role in the development of essentialist beliefs. Overall, this work suggests that general inherent reasoning buttresses disparate beliefs about the way the world works. These findings highlight the value in investigating the ways in which abstract, higher-order judgments and beliefs are shaped by basic cognitive processes.\"","Submission published under a 24 month embargo labeled 'U of I Access', the embargo will last until 2018-08-01","The student, Shelbie Sutherland, accepted the attached license on 2016-06-22 at 11:11.","The student, Shelbie Sutherland, submitted this Dissertation for approval on 2016-06-22 at 13:46.","This Dissertation was approved for publication on 2016-06-27 at 16:47.","DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #9691 on 2016-11-10 at 12:24:39","Made available in DSpace on 2016-11-10T18:39:11Z (GMT). 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Often, these explanations are the product of a heuristic process that relies on highly accessible information to make sense of a phenomenon (Cimpian & Salomon, 2014a, 2014b; Thomas, Dougherty, Sprenger, & Harbison, 2008). Importantly, highly accessible information is often skewed to include features inherent to that which is being reasoned about, without reference to external impact or happenstance. Because of this bias in highly accessible information, generating explanations heuristically has downstream consequences for the beliefs people hold about the way the world works. Here, I focus on two beliefs that I propose are underlain by inherent reasoning. In Part 1, six studies provide evidence that children's and adults' inherent reasoning promotes a belief that words and their referents are not arbitrarily paired but rather \"\"fit\"\" particularly well together (nominal fit). In Part 2, I provide evidence across three studies that inherent reasoning may also play a role in the development of essentialist beliefs. Overall, this work suggests that general inherent reasoning buttresses disparate beliefs about the way the world works. These findings highlight the value in investigating the ways in which abstract, higher-order judgments and beliefs are shaped by basic cognitive processes.\"","Submission published under a 24 month embargo labeled 'U of I Access', the embargo will last until 2018-08-01","The student, Shelbie Sutherland, accepted the attached license on 2016-06-22 at 11:11.","The student, Shelbie Sutherland, submitted this Dissertation for approval on 2016-06-22 at 13:46.","This Dissertation was approved for publication on 2016-06-27 at 16:47.","DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #9691 on 2016-11-10 at 12:24:39","Made available in DSpace on 2016-11-10T18:39:11Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 4 SUTHERLAND-DISSERTATION-2016.pdf: 899942 bytes, checksum: 6070e8ac99668b6a3da2e4eaf98b20ac (MD5) LICENSE.txt: 4215 bytes, checksum: 406537483ea59776e3cc53d71b57da10 (MD5) PROQUEST_LICENSE.txt: 4561 bytes, checksum: ea4baeb780953987415d2b8788d03196 (MD5) RightsLink Printable License.pdf: 262548 bytes, checksum: 57431c66e398cb269d09cf6eb6de245c (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-06-27","Embargo set by: Seth Robbins for item 95437 Lift date: 2018-11-10T18:39:22Z Reason: Author requested U of Illinois access only (OA after 2yrs) in Vireo ETD system","Embargo set by: Seth Robbins for item 95437 Lift date: 2018-11-10T18:43:22Z Reason: Author requested U of Illinois access only (OA after 2yrs) in Vireo ETD system","U of I Only Restriction Lifted for Item 95437 on 2018-11-11T10:15:45Z."],"dc:format":["application/pdf"],"dc:identifier":["http://hdl.handle.net/2142/93015"],"dc:language":["en"],"dc:rights":["Copyright 2016 Shelbie Sutherland"],"dc:subject":["explanation","heuristics","inherence heuristic","nominal fit","essentialism","conceptual development"],"dc:title":["A general explanatory tendency underlies common assumptions about how the world works: an investigation of nominal fit and essentialist beliefs"],"dc:type":["text"],"thesis:degree_discipline":["Psychology"],"thesis:degree_level":["Dissertation"],"thesis:degree_name":["Ph.D."],"thesis:institution_name":["University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign"]},"updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:26:35Z"}