Although routinely informed of the benefits of fruits and vegetables, Americans eat far short of the recommendedamounts. Instead of just telling people that fruits and vegetables are healthy, providing a compelling causal and teleologicalexplanatory framework could increase both people’s conviction about their health benefits and commitment to increasing theamount and variety of fruits and vegetables they consume. Our brief intervention: (1) emphasizes that fruits and vegetables havethousands of health-promoting phytochemicals, well beyond just vitamins, (2) describes clear causal mechanisms by whichthese foods ensure cellular health, (3) draws an analogy between the benefits of plant-based foods and the power of plant-derived medicines, and (4) explains that plants contain abundant nutrients because they must manufacture these chemicals fortheir own survival. This novel intervention improved understanding and increased participants’ intentions to eat more fruits andvegetables, illustrating how intuitive theories can shape motivation for behavioral change.

How are emotions understood to relate to other aspects of mental life? Among US adults, concepts of mental life are anchored by a distinction between physiological sensations (BODY), social-emotional abilities (HEART), and perceptual-cognitive capacities (MIND); these conceptual units are in place by 7-9y (Weisman et al., 2017a, 2017b, 2018). Here we reanalyze these datasets to explore the structural relationships among BODY, HEART, and MIND. Across six studies (N=1758), adults’ assessments of the mental lives of robots, beetles, birds, goats, and other entities revealed a clear hierarchical structure: social-emotional abilities were virtually never granted to any entity perceived to lack physiological sensations or perceptual-cognitive abilities. This is consistent with a folk theory—similar to prominent theories in affective science—in which emotions emerge from the combination of more basic capacities for sensation and cognition. Studies of US children (4-9y, N=445) suggest that it takes years for children to acquire this understanding.

How should we represent social categories? Essentialism, which posits an internal category essence, has negative consequences such as group-based generalization and intolerance of nonconformity. Structural representations, which consider categories as situated in a larger context, could be more constructive. When considering a neutral context, adults who learned a structural (food availability) cause for a novel group’s diet, versus a biological (allergies, digestion) or cultural (taboo) cause, generalized in a context-sensitive manner, considered nonconformity to be more possible and acceptable, and suggested intervening on the structural context rather than the group to change the property. When considering social stratification, adults who learned a structural (discrimination) cause for a novel group working a low-status job, versus a biological (physically well-suited) or cultural (traditions/values) cause, showed more context-sensitive generalization, considered the present disparity to be more unacceptable, and suggested more structural interventions. Structural representations may consequently be a more constructive alternative to essentialism.