​

2020

​

​

[pdf] Siddiqui, H., Cimpian, A., & Rutherford, M. D. (2020). Canadian children’s concepts of national groups: A comparison with children from the United States. Developmental Psychology, 56(11), 2102–2109.   

 

• Resources: Supplementary Materials, Analytic Syntax and Raw Data 

​

​

[pdf] Storage, D., Charlesworth, T. E. S., Banaji, M. R., & Cimpian, A. (2020). Adults and children implicitly associate brilliance with men more than women. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 90, 104020.   

 

• Resources: Supplementary Materials, Analytic Syntax and Raw Data  

• Media/Blogs: Fast Company, Forbes, Business Insider, Verywell Mind, Yahoo! News, Futurity

​

​

[pdf] Muradoglu, M., & Cimpian, A. (2020). Children’s intuitive theories of academic performance. Child Development, 91(4), e902–e918. 

 

• Resources: Supplementary Materials, Analytic Syntax and Raw Data 

• Media/Blogs: It's Innate! Podcast

​

​

[pdf] Vial, A. C., & Cimpian, A. (2020). Evaluative feedback expresses and reinforces cultural stereotypes. In E. Brummelman (Ed.), Psychological Perspectives on Praise (pp. 119–128). Abingdon, UK: Routledge.

​

​

[pdf] *Landy, J. F., *Jia, M., *Ding, I. L., *Viganola, D., Tierney, W., ... Cimpian, A., ... *Uhlmann, E. L. (2020). Crowdsourcing hypothesis tests: Making transparent how design choices shape research results. Psychological Bulletin, 146(5), 451–479. 

 

• Notes: The authors marked with an asterisk contributed equally to the work.

• Resources: Supplementary Materials, Analytic Syntax and Raw Data 

​

​

[pdf] Foster-Hanson, E., Cimpian, A., Leshin, R. A., & Rhodes, M. (2020). Asking children to “be helpers” can backfire after setbacks. Child Development, 91(1), 236–248. 

 

• Resources: Supplementary Materials, Analytic Syntax and Raw Data 

• Media/Blogs: The Independent, Education Week, ScienceDaily

​

​

[pdf] Heyder, A., Weidinger, A. F., Cimpian, A., & Steinmayr, R. (2020). Teachers’ belief that math requires innate ability predicts lower intrinsic motivation among low-achieving students. Learning and Instruction, 65, 101220. 

 

• Resources: Analytic Syntax 

• Media/Blogs: Blog on Learning and Development (BOLD)

​

​

2019

​

​​

[pdf] *Jaxon, J., *Lei, R. F., Shachnai, R., Chestnut, E. K., & Cimpian, A. (2019). The acquisition of gender stereotypes about intellectual ability: Intersections with race. Journal of Social Issues, 75(4), 1192–2015. 

 

• Notes: The authors marked with an asterisk contributed equally to the work.

• Resources: Supplementary Materials, Analytic Syntax and Raw Data 

• Media/Blogs: Los Angeles Times, Futurity, New York University

​

​

[pdf] Horne, Z., & Cimpian, A. (2019). Intuitions about personal identity are rooted in essentialist thinking across development. Cognition, 191, 103981. 

 

• Resources: Supplementary Materials, Analytic Syntax and Raw Data  

​

​

[pdf] Christy, A. G., Schlegel, R. J., & Cimpian, A. (2019). Why do people believe in a “true self”? The role of essentialist reasoning about personal identity and the self. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 117(2), 386–416. 

 

• Resources: Supplementary Materials, Analytic Syntax, and Raw Data  

• Media/Blogs: Texas A&M News, SPSP blog 

​

​

[pdf] Hussak, L. J., & Cimpian, A. (2019). “It feels like it’s in your body”: How children in the United States think about nationality. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 148(7), 1153–1168. 

 

• Resources: Analytic Syntax and Raw Data

• Media/Blogs: Scientific American, Futurity, ScienceDaily

​

​

[pdf] *Horne, Z., *Muradoglu, M., & Cimpian, A. (2019). Explanation as a cognitive process. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 23(3), 187–199. 

 

• Notes: The authors marked with an asterisk contributed equally to the work. 

​

​

[pdf] Sutherland, S. L., & Cimpian, A. (2019). Developmental evidence for a link between the inherence bias in explanation and psychological essentialism. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 177, 265–281. 

 

• Resources: Supplementary Materials, Analytic Syntax and Raw Data

​

​

2018

​

​

[pdf] Bian, L., Leslie, S. J., & Cimpian, A. (2018). Evidence of bias against girls and women in contexts that emphasize intellectual ability. American Psychologist, 73(9), 1139–1153. 

 

• Resources: Supplementary Materials, Analytic Syntax and Raw Data 

• Media/Blogs: The Guardian, The Times (London), NYU Alumni Magazine, Pacific Standard, New York Post, Futurity 

​

​

[pdf] Boston, J. S., & Cimpian, A. (2018). How do we encourage gifted girls to pursue and succeed in science and engineering? Gifted Child Today, 41(4), 196–207. 

 

• Media/Blogs: The Conversation

​

​

[pdf] Gelman, S. A., Cimpian, A., & Roberts, S. O. (2018). How deep do we dig? Formal explanations as placeholders for inherent explanations. Cognitive Psychology, 106, 43–59. 

 

• Resources: Supplementary Experiment, Analytic Syntax and Raw Data

​

​

[pdf] Chestnut, E. K., Lei, R. F., Leslie, S. J., & Cimpian, A. (2018). The myth that only brilliant people are good at math and its implications for diversity. Education Sciences, 8(2), 65. 

 

• Notes: Invited contribution to the special issue on Dispelling Myths about Mathematics, edited by J. Boaler.

• Media/Blogs: Blog on Learning and Development (BOLD)

​

​

[pdf] Bian, L., Leslie, S. J., Murphy, M. C., & Cimpian, A. (2018). Messages about brilliance undermine women’s interest in educational and professional opportunities. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 76, 404–420. 

 

• Resources: Supplementary Materials, Raw Data 

• Media/Blogs: National Science Foundation, Pacific Standard, Nature, International Business Times, Inverse, Futurity

​

​

[pdf] Horne, Z., & Cimpian, A. (2018). Subtle syntactic cues affect intuitions about knowledge: Methodological and theoretical implications. In T. Lombrozo, J. Knobe, & S. Nichols (Eds.), Oxford Studies in Experimental Philosophy, Vol. 2 (pp. 7–37). New York: Oxford University Press.

​

​

[pdf] Hussak, L. J., & Cimpian, A. (2018). Investigating the origins of political views: Biases in explanation predict conservative attitudes in children and adults. Developmental Science, 21, e12567. 

 

• Resources: Supplementary Materials, Raw Data 

• Media/Blogs: Pacific Standard

​

​

[pdf] Cimpian, A., Gollwitzer, P. M., & Oettingen, G. (2018). Intuition. In M. H. Bornstein (Ed.), The SAGE Encyclopedia of Lifespan Human Development (pp. 1219–1220). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

​

​

[pdf] Hussak, L. J., & Cimpian, A. (2018). Memory accessibility shapes explanation: Testing key claims of the inherence heuristic account. Memory & Cognition, 46(1), 68–88. 

 

• Resources: Analytic Syntax and Raw Data

​

​

[pdf] Rhodes, M., Leslie, S. J., Saunders, K., Dunham, Y., & Cimpian, A. (2018). How does social essentialism affect the development of inter-group relations? Developmental Science, 21, e12509.

​

​

2017

​

​

[pdf] Cimpian, A., Hammond, M. D., Mazza, G., & Corry, G. (2017). Young children’s self-concepts include representations of abstract traits and the global self. Child Development, 88(6), 1786–1798. 

 

• Resources: Supplementary Materials, Raw Data 

• Media/Blogs: Futurity, ScienceDaily

​

​

[pdf] Cimpian, A., & Leslie, S. J. (2017). The brilliance trap: How a misplaced emphasis on genius subtly discourages women and African-Americans from certain academic fields. Scientific American, 317, 60–65.

​

​

[pdf] Cimpian, A., & Keil, F. C. (2017). Preface for the special issue on the Process of Explanation. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 24(5), 1361–1363. 

 

• Resources: Special Issue 

• Media/Blogs: Psychonomic Society Digital Event​

​

​

[pdf] Tasimi, A., Gelman, S. A., Cimpian, A., & Knobe, J. (2017). Differences in the evaluation of generic statements about human and non-human categories. Cognitive Science, 41(7), 1934–1957.

​

​

[pdf] Hammond, M. D., & Cimpian, A. (2017). Investigating the cognitive structure of stereotypes: Generic beliefs about groups predict social judgments better than statistical beliefs. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 146(5), 607–614. 

 

• Resources: Supplementary Materials, Raw Data and Analytic Syntax  

• Media/Blogs: Journal Club (blog of the National Academy of Sciences), Imperfect Cognitions blog

​

​

[pdf] Bian, L., Leslie, S. J., & Cimpian, A. (2017). Gender stereotypes about intellectual ability emerge early and influence children’s interests. Science, 355(6323), 389–391. 

 

• Notes: Ranked 5th in Altmetric's Top 100 most-discussed papers of 2017 (out of 2.2 million research outputs tracked).

• Resources: Supplementary Materials, Raw Data  

• Media/Blogs: The New York Times, Scientific American, The Atlantic, NPR, Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly, The Washington Post (N. Anderson), The Washington Post (R. Gebelhoff), Los Angeles Times, The Associated Press, National Science Foundation, Smithsonian, The Guardian, BBC News, The Philadelphia Inquirer, CNN, Quartz, Huffington Post, Mashable, The Onion

​

​

[pdf] Cimpian, A. (2017). Early reasoning about competence is not irrationally optimistic, nor does it stem from inadequate cognitive representations. In A. J. Elliot, C. S. Dweck, & D. S. Yeager (Eds.), Handbook of Competence and Motivation (2nd Edition): Theory and Application (pp. 387–407). New York: Guilford Press.

 

​

[pdf] Bian, L., & Cimpian, A. (2017). Are stereotypes accurate? A perspective from the cognitive science of concepts. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 40, e3. [commentary]​

  

• Resources: BBS target article

• Media/Blogs: SPSP blog (among the 5 most popular SPSP blogs of 2016), Andrew Gelman's blog 

​

​

[pdf] Sutherland, S. L., & Cimpian, A. (2017). Inductive generalization relies on category representations. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 24(2), 632–636.

​

​

2016

​

​

[pdf] Tworek, C. M., & Cimpian, A. (2016). Why do people tend to infer “ought” from “is”? The role of biases in explanation. Psychological Science, 27(8), 1109–1122.

 

• Resources: Supplementary Materials and Raw Data 

• Media/Blogs: The Conversation, Psychology Today, Illinois News Bureau

​

​

[pdf] *Schweinsberg, M., *Madan, N., ... Cimpian, A., ... & *Uhlmann, E. L. (2016). The pipeline project: Pre-publication independent replications of a single laboratory’s research pipeline. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 66, 55–67.  

 

• Notes: The authors marked with an asterisk contributed equally to the work. In total, there are 82 authors.

• Resources: Supplementary Materials

​

​

[pdf] Qu, Y., Pomerantz, E. M., Wang, M., Cheung, C., & Cimpian, A. (2016). Conceptions of adolescence: Implications for differences in engagement in school over early adolescence in the United States and China. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 45(7), 1512–1526.

​

​

[pdf] Cimpian, A. (2016). The privileged status of category representations in early development. Child Development Perspectives, 10(2), 99–104.

​

​

[pdf] Storage, D., Horne, Z., Cimpian, A., & Leslie, S. J. (2016). The frequency of “brilliant” and “genius” in teaching evaluations predicts the representation of women and African Americans across fields. PLOS ONE, 11(3), e0150194.

   

• Notes: Top 1% most downloaded of all PLOS ONE articles published in 2016.

• Resources: Supplementary Materials  

• Media/Blogs: Inside Higher Ed, U.S. News & World Report, The Daily Beast, Huffington Post, Illinois News Bureau

​

​

2015

​

​

[pdf] Hussak, L. J., & Cimpian, A. (2015). An early-emerging explanatory heuristic promotes support for the status quo. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 109(5), 739–752. 

 

• Resources: Supplementary Materials  

• Media/Blogs: SPSP blog, Illinois News Bureau, The Conversation, Time, Fortune

​

​

[pdf] Cimpian, A., & Leslie, S. J. (2015). Response to comment on “Expectations of brilliance underlie gender distributions across academic disciplines.” Science, 349(6246), 391.

​

​

[pdf] Sutherland, S. L., & Cimpian, A. (2015). Children show heightened knew-it-all-along errors when learning new facts about kinds: Evidence for the power of kind representations in children’s thinking. Developmental Psychology, 51(8), 1115–1130.

 

• Media/Blogs: Illinois News Bureau

​

​

[pdf] Sutherland, S. L., & Cimpian, A. (2015). An explanatory heuristic gives rise to the belief that words are well suited for their referents. Cognition, 143, 228–240.

 

• Media/Blogs: The Conversation, IFL Science

​

​

[pdf] Sutherland, S. L., Cimpian, A., Leslie, S. J., & Gelman, S. A. (2015). Memory errors reveal a bias to spontaneously generalize to categories. Cognitive Science, 39(5), 1021–1046.

​

​

[pdf] Cimpian, A. (2015). The inherence heuristic: Generating everyday explanations. In R. Scott & S. Kosslyn (Eds.), Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences (pp. 1–15). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons.

​

​

[pdf] Meyer, M., Cimpian, A., & Leslie, S. J. (2015). Women are underrepresented in fields where success is believed to require brilliance. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 235. 

 

• Notes: Invited contribution to the special issue on the Underrepresentation of Women in Science: International and Cross-Disciplinary Evidence and Debate, edited by S. J. Ceci, W. M. Williams, and S. Kahn.

​

​

[pdf] *Leslie, S. J., *Cimpian, A., Meyer, M., & Freeland, E. (2015). Expectations of brilliance underlie gender distributions across academic disciplines. Science, 347(6219), 262–265. 

 

• Notes: The authors marked with an asterisk contributed equally to the work.

• Resources: Supplementary Materials, FAQ 

• Media/Blogs: Edge, Science, Science Friday (NPR), The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, National Science Foundation, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Science News, Illinois News Bureau, NBC, Smithsonian

​

​

2014

​

​

[pdf] Cimpian, A., & Salomon, E. (2014). The inherence heuristic: An intuitive means of making sense of the world, and a potential precursor to psychological essentialism. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 37(5), 461–480. [target article]

 

• Media/Blogs: SPSP blog

​

​

[pdf] Cimpian, A., & Salomon, E. (2014). Refining and expanding the proposal of an inherence heuristic in human understanding. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 37(5), 506–527. [response to commentaries]

​

​

[pdf] Cimpian, A., & Steinberg, O. D. (2014). The inherence heuristic across development: Systematic differences between children’s and adults’ explanations for everyday facts. Cognitive Psychology, 75, 130–154.

​

​

[pdf] Salomon, E., & Cimpian, A. (2014). The inherence heuristic as a source of essentialist thought. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 40(10), 1297–1315.

 

• Resources: Raw Data

​

​

[pdf] Cimpian, A., & Petro, G. (2014). Building theory-based concepts: Four-year-olds preferentially seek explanations for features of kinds. Cognition, 131(2), 300–310.

​

​

[pdf] Cimpian, A., & Park, J. J. (2014). Tell me about pangolins! Evidence that children are motivated to learn about kinds. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(1), 46–55. 

 

• Media/Blogs: Psychology Today

​

​

2012 & 2013

​

​

[pdf] Cimpian, A. (2013). Generic statements, causal attributions, and children’s naive theories. In M. R. Banaji & S. A. Gelman (Eds.), Navigating the Social World: What infants, children, and other species can teach us (pp. 269–274). New York: Oxford University Press.

​

​

[pdf] Cimpian, A., Mu, Y., & Erickson, L. C. (2012). Who is good at this game? Linking an activity to a social category undermines children’s achievement. Psychological Science, 23(5), 533–541. 

 

• Media/Blogs: The Huffington Post, ScienceDaily, Mindset Scholars Network

​

​

[pdf] Cimpian, A., & Scott, R. M. (2012). Children expect generic knowledge to be widely shared. Cognition, 123(3), 419–433.

​

​

[pdf] Brandone, A. C., Cimpian, A., Leslie, S. J., & Gelman, S. A. (2012). Do lions have manes? For children, generics are about kinds rather than quantities. Child Development, 83(2), 423–433.

​

​

[pdf] Cimpian, A., & Erickson, L. C. (2012). Remembering kinds: New evidence that categories are privileged in children’s thinking. Cognitive Psychology, 64(3), 161–185.

​

​

[pdf] Cimpian, A., & Erickson, L. C. (2012). The effect of generic statements on children’s causal attributions: Questions of mechanism. Developmental Psychology, 48(1), 159–170.

​

​

2010 & 2011

​

​

[pdf] Cimpian, A., Meltzer, T. J., & Markman, E. M. (2011). Preschoolers’ use of morphosyntactic cues to identify generic sentences: Indefinite singular noun phrases, tense, and aspect. Child Development, 82(5), 1561–1578.

​

​

[pdf] Cimpian, A., & Markman, E. M. (2011). The generic/nongeneric distinction influences how children interpret new information about social others. Child Development, 82(2), 471–492.

​

​

[pdf] Cimpian, A., Brandone, A. C., & Gelman, S. A. (2010). Generic statements require little evidence for acceptance but have powerful implications. Cognitive Science, 34(8), 1452–1482. 

 

• Media/Blogs: Psychology Today

​

​

[pdf] Cimpian, A. (2010). The impact of generic language about ability on children’s achievement motivation. Developmental Psychology, 46(5), 1333–1340.

​

​

[pdf] Cimpian, A., & Cadena, C. (2010). Why are dunkels sticky? Preschoolers infer functionality and intentional creation for artifact properties learned from generic language. Cognition, 117(1), 62–68.

​

​

[pdf] Cimpian, A., Gelman, S. A., & Brandone, A. C. (2010). Theory-based considerations influence the interpretation of generic sentences. Language and Cognitive Processes, 25(2), 261–276.

​

​

2005–2009

​

​

[pdf] Cimpian, A., & Markman, E. M. (2009). Information learned from generic language becomes central to children’s biological concepts: Evidence from their open-ended explanations. Cognition, 113(1), 14–25.

​

​

[pdf] Cimpian, A., & Markman, E. M. (2008). Preschool children’s use of cues to generic meaning. Cognition, 107(1), 19–53.

​

​

[pdf] Cimpian, A., Arce, H. C., Markman, E. M., & Dweck, C. S. (2007). Subtle linguistic cues affect children’s motivation. Psychological Science, 18(4), 314–316. 

 

• Resources: Supplementary Materials (Script)

​

​

[pdf] Cimpian, A., & Markman, E. M. (2005). The absence of a shape bias in children’s word learning. Developmental Psychology, 41(6), 1003–1019.

​

​