Seminal work by Knobe, Prasada, and Newman (2013) distinguished a set of concepts, which they named “dual-character concepts.” Unlike traditional concepts, they require two distinct criteria for determining category membership. For example, the prototypical dual-character concept “artist” has both a concrete dimension of artistic skills, and an abstract dimension of aesthetic sensibility and values. Therefore, someone can be a good artist on the concrete dimension but not truly an artist on the abstract dimension. Does this analysis capture people's understanding of cornerstone social categories, such as gender, around which society and everyday life have traditionally been organized? Gender, too, may be conceived as having not only a concrete dimension but also a distinct dimension of abstract norms and values. As with dual-character concepts, violations of abstract norms and values may result in someone being judged as not truly a man/woman. Here, we provide the first empirical assessment of applying the dual-character framework to people's conception of gender. We found that, on some measures that primarily relied on metalinguistic cues, gender concepts did indeed resemble dual-character concepts. However, on other measures that depicted transgressions of traditional gender norms, neither “man” nor “woman” appeared dual-character-like, in that participants did not disqualify people from being truly a man or truly a woman. In a series of follow-up studies, we examined whether moral norms have come to replace gender role norms for the abstract dimension. Implications for the evolution of concepts and categories are explored.

中文翻译：

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性别类别作为双重角色概念？

Knobe、Prasada 和 Newman (2013) 的开创性工作区分了一组概念，他们将其命名为“双字符概念”。与传统概念不同，它们需要两个不同的标准来确定类别成员资格。例如，典型的双字概念“艺术家”既有艺术技能的具体维度，也有审美感性和价值观的抽象维度。因此，一个人可以在具体维度上成为一个好的艺术家，但在抽象维度上却不是真正的艺术家。这种分析是否捕捉到人们对传统社会和日常生活所围绕的基石社会类别（例如性别）的理解？性别也可以被认为不仅具有具体的维度，而且具有抽象规范和价值的独特维度。与双字符概念一样，违反抽象规范和价值观可能会导致某人被判断为不是真正的男人/女人。在这里，我们提供了将双重特征框架应用于人们的性别观念的第一个实证评估。我们发现，在一些主要依赖元语言线索的测量中，性别概念确实类似于双字符概念。然而，在描述违反传统性别规范的其他衡量标准上，“男人”和“女人”都没有出现双重角色，因为参与者并没有取消人们成为真正男人或真正女人的资格。在一系列后续研究中，我们检查了道德规范是否已经取代抽象维度的性别角色规范。探讨了概念和类别演变的含义。