title: You get what you need: an examination of purpose- based inheritance reasoning in undergraduates, preschoolers, and biological experts.
abstract: This set of seven experiments examines reasoning about the inheritance and acquisition of physical properties in preschoolers, undergraduates, and biology experts. Participants (N = 390) received adoption vignettes in which a baby animal was born to one parent but raised by a biologically unrelated parent, and they judged whether the offspring would have the same property as the birth or rearing parent. For each vignette, the animal parents had contrasting values on a physical property dimension (e.g., the birth parent had a short tail; the rearing parent had a long tail). Depending on the condition, the distinct properties had distinct functions (“function-predictive”) were associated with distinct habitats (“habitat-predictive”), or had no implications (“non-predictive”). Undergraduates' bias to view properties as inherited from the birth parent was reduced in the function- and habitat-predictive conditions. This result indicates a purpose-based view of inheritance, whereby animals can acquire properties that serve a purpose in their environment. This stance was not found in experts or preschoolers. We discuss the results in terms of how undergraduates' purpose-based inheritance reasoning develops and relates to larger-scale misconceptions about Darwinian evolutionary processes, and implications for biology education.
authors.forename: Elizabeth A
authors.initials: EA
authors.lastname: Ware
authors.forename: Susan A
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Gelman
mesh_terms: D000222:Adaptation, Physiological / Q000502:physiology; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D005075:Biological Evolution; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology*; D055815:Young Adult