Cultural transmission of social essentialism.

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Abstract

Social essentialism entails the belief that certain social categories (e.g., gender, race) mark fundamentally distinct kinds of people. Essentialist beliefs have pernicious consequences, supporting social stereotyping and contributing to prejudice. How does social essentialism develop? In the studies reported here, we tested the hypothesis that generic language facilitates the cultural transmission of social essentialism. Two studies found that hearing generic language about a novel social category diverse for race, ethnicity, age, and sex led 4-y-olds and adults to develop essentialist beliefs about that social category. A third study documented that experimentally inducing parents to hold essentialist beliefs about a novel social category led them to produce more generic language when discussing the category with their children. Thus, generic language facilitates the transmission of essentialist beliefs about social categories from parents to children.

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In genes we trust: the biological component of psychological essentialism and its relationship to mechanisms of motivated social cognition.

Johannes Keller (2005)

Three studies analyzed the biological component of psychological essentialism (laypeople's belief that social categories have an underlying nature/natural foundation) as it pertains to mechanisms of motivated social cognition. A new scale assessing the belief in genetic determinism is introduced as a measure of the biological component of essentialism. Results speak to the reliability and validity of the scale and show that essentialist beliefs are associated with basic social-cognitive motives and are also related to processes of stereotyping and prejudice. An experimental study found that rendering essentialist information salient elicits increased levels of prejudice and in-group bias, particularly in persons holding chronic essentialist beliefs. Copyright 2005 APA.

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Essentialist beliefs about social categories.

Michael L Rothschild, N Haslam, Florian Ernst (2000)

This study examines beliefs about the ontological status of social categories, asking whether their members are understood to share fixed, inhering essences or natures. Forty social categories were rated on nine elements of essentialism. These elements formed two independent dimensions, representing the degrees to which categories are understood as natural kinds and as coherent entities with inhering cores ('entitativity' or reification), respectively. Reification was negatively associated with categories' evaluative status, especially among those categories understood to be natural kinds. Essentialism is not a unitary syndrome of social beliefs, and is not monolithically associated with devaluation and prejudice, but it illuminates several aspects of social categorization.

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Are essentialist beliefs associated with prejudice?

Nick Haslam, Louis Rothschild, Donald Ernst (2002)

Gordon Allport (1954) proposed that belief in group essences is one aspect of the prejudiced personality, alongside a rigid, dichotomous and ambiguity-intolerant cognitive style. We examined whether essentialist beliefs-beliefs that a social category has a fixed, inherent, identity-defining nature-are indeed associated in this fashion with prejudice towards black people, women and gay men. Allport's claim, which is mirrored by many contemporary social theorists, received partial support but had to be qualified in important respects. Essence-related beliefs were associated strongly with anti-gay attitudes but only weakly with sexism and racism, and they did not reflect a cognitive style that was consistent across stigmatized categories. When associations with prejudice were obtained, only a few specific beliefs were involved, and some anti-essentialist beliefs were associated with anti-gay attitudes. Nevertheless, the powerful association that essence-related beliefs had with anti-gay attitudes was independent of established prejudice-related traits, indicating that they have a significant role to play in the psychology of prejudice.