Psychological essentialism entails a focus on category boundaries (e.g., categorizing people as men or women) and an increase in the conceptual distance between those boundaries (e.g., accentuating the differences between men and women). Across eight studies, we demonstrate that essentialism additionally entails an increase in support for boundary-enhancing legislation, policies, and social services, and that it does so under conditions that disadvantage social groups, as well as conditions that benefit them. First, individual differences in essentialism were associated with support for legislation mandating that transgender people use restrooms corresponding with their biological sex, and with support for the boundary-enhancing policies of the 2016 then-presumptive Republican presidential nominee (i.e., Donald Trump). Second, essentialism was associated with support for same-gender classrooms designed to promote student learning, as well as support for services designed to benefit LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) individuals. These findings demonstrate the boundary-enhancing implications of essentialism and their social significance.
BastianB.HaslamN. (2006). Psychological essentialism and stereotype endorsement. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 42, 228-235. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2005.03.003
2.
BastianB.HaslamN. (2008). Immigration from the perspective of hosts and immigrants: Roles of psychological essentialism and social identity. Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 11, 127-140. doi:10.1111/j.1467-839X.2008.00250.x
3.
BiglerR. S.SignorellaM. L. (2011). Single-sex education: New perspectives and evidence on a continuing controversy. Sex Roles, 65, 659-669. doi:10.1007/s22299-011-0046-x
4.
BouwmeesterS.VerkkoeijenP. P. J. L.AczelB.BarbosaF.BègueL.Brañas-GarzaP.. . . WollbrantC. E. (2017). Registered Replication Report: Rand, Greene, and Nowak (2012). Perspectives on Psychological Science, 12, 527-542. doi:10.1177/1745691617693624
5.
ChaoM. M.ChenJ.RoismanG. I.HongY. (2007). Essentializing race: Implications for bicultural individuals’ cognition and physiological reactivity. Psychological Science, 18, 341-349. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01901.x
6.
ChaoM. M.HongY.ChiuC. (2013). Essentializing race: Its implications on racial categorization. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 104, 619-634. doi:10.1037/a0031332
7.
ChristensenK. D.JayaratneT.RobertsJ.KardiaS.PettyE. (2010). Understandings of basic genetics in the United States: Results from a national survey of Black and White men and women. Public Health Genomics, 13, 467-476. doi:10.1159/000293287
8.
ColemanJ.HongY. (2008). Beyond nature and nurture: The influence of lay gender theories on self-stereotyping. Self & Identity, 7, 34-53. doi: 10.1080/15298860600980185
9.
CrosbyF.AllenB.CulbertsonT.WallyC.MorithJ.HallR.NunesS. (1994). Taking selectivity into account, how much does gender composition matter? A reanalysis of M. E Tidball’s research. NWSA Journal, 6, 107-118.
10.
DiesendruckG.GelmanS. A. (1999). Domain differences in absolute judgments of category membership: Evidence for an essentialist account of categorization. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 6, 338-346. doi:10.3758/BF03212339
11.
DiesendruckG.Goldfein-ElbazR.RhodesM.GelmanS.NeumarkN. (2013). Cross-cultural differences in children’s beliefs about the objectivity of social categories. Child Development, 84, 1-12. doi:10.1111/cdev.12108
12.
DunhamY.OlsonK. R. (2016). Beyond discrete categories: Studying multiracial, intersex, and transgender children will strengthen basic developmental science. Journal of Cognition and Development, 17, 642-665. doi:10.1080/15248372.2016.1195388
13.
FaulF.ErdfelderE.BuchnerA.LangA. G. (2009). Statistical power analyses using G*Power 3.1: Tests for correlation and regression analyses. Behavior Research Methods, 41, 1149-1160. doi: 10.3758/BRM.41.4.1149.
14.
FrableD. E. S.BernS. L. (1985). If you are gender schematic, all members of the opposite sex look alike. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49, 459-468. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.49.2.459d
15.
GauntR. (2006). Biological essentialism, gender ideologies, and role attitudes: What determines parents’ involvement in child care. Sex Roles, 55, 523-533. doi:10.1007/s11199-006-9105-0
16.
GelmanS. A. (2003). The essential child: Origins of essentialism in everyday life. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
17.
GelmanS. A.WellmanH. M. (1991). Insides and essences: Early understandings of the non-obvious. Cognition, 38, 213-244. doi:10.1016/0010-0277(91)90007-Q
GohJ. X.HallJ. A.RosenthalR. (2016). Mini meta-analysis of your own studies: Some arguments on why and a primer on how. Social & Personality Psychology Compass, 10/10, 535-549. doi:10.1111/spc3.12267
20.
HarnadS. (1987). Categorical perception: The groundwork of cognition. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
21.
HaslamN.LevyS. R. (2006). Essentialism beliefs about homosexuality: Structure and implications for prejudice. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32, 471-485. doi:10.1177/0146167205276516
22.
HaslamN.RothschildL.ErnstD. (2002). Are essentialist beliefs associated with prejudice?British Journal of Social Psychology, 41, 87-100. doi:10.1348/014466602165072
23.
HaslamN.RothschildL.ErnstD. (2000). Essentialist beliefs about social categories. The British Journal of Social Psychology, 39, 113-127. doi:10.1348/014466600164363fau
24.
HaslamN.WhelanJ. (2008). Human natures: Psychological essentialism in thinking about differences between people. Social & Personality Psychology Compass, 2/3, 1297-1312. doi:10.1111/j.1751-9004.2008.001122.x
25.
HerekG. M. (1997). The Attitudes Toaward Lesbians and Gay Men (ATLG) scale. In DavisC. M.YarberW. H.BausermanR.SchreerG.DavisS. L. (Eds.), Sexuality-Related Measures: A Compendium. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
26.
HegartyP.PrattoF. (2001). Sexual orientation beliefs: Their relationship to anti-gay attitudes and biological determinist arguments. Journal of Homosexuality, 41, 121-135. doi:10.1300/J082v41n01_04
27.
HicksG. R.LeeT. (2006). Public attitudes toward gays and lesbians: Trends predictors. Journal of Homosexuality, 51, 57-77. doi:10.1200/J082v51n02_04
28.
HirschfeldL. A. (1995). The inheritability of identity: Children’s understanding of the cultural biology of race. Child Development, 66, 1418-1437. doi:10.2307/1131655
29.
HoA. K.KteilyN.ChenJ. M. (2017). “You’re one of us”: Black Americans’ use of hypodescent and its association with egalitarianism. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1037/pspi0000107
30.
HoA. K.RobertsS. O.GelmanS. A. (2015a). Essentialism and racial bias jointly contribute to the categorization of multiracial individuals. Psychological Science, 26, 1639-1645. doi:10.1177/0956797615596436
31.
HoA. K.SidaniusJ.KteilyN.Sheehy-SkeffingtonJ.PrattoF.HenkelK. E.. . . StewartA. L. (2015b). The nature of social dominance orientation: Theorizing and measuring preferences for intergroup inequality using the new SDO7 scale. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 109, 1003-1028. doi:10.1037/pspi0000033
32.
HoA. K.SidaniusJ.LevinD. T.BanajiM. R. (2011). Evidence for hypodescent and racial hierarchy in the categorization and perception of biracial individuals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100, 492-506. doi:10.1037/a0021562
33.
HoA. K.SidaniusJ.PrattoF.LevinS.ThomsenL.KteilyN.. . . Sheehy-SkeffingtonJ. (2012). Social dominance orientation: Revisiting the structure and function of a variable predicting social and political attitudes. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38, 583-606. doi:10.1177/0146167211432765
34.
JostJ. T.BanajiM.NosekB. (2004). A decade of system justification theory: Accumulated evidence of conscious and unconscious bolstering of the status quo. Political Psychology, 25, 881-919. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9221.2004.00402.x
35.
KellerJ. (2005). In genes we trust: The biological component of psychological essentialism and its relationship to mechansims of motivated social cognition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88, 686-702. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.88.4.686
36.
KeilF. C. (1989). Concepts, kinds, and cognitive development. Cambridge, MA: Bradford Books.
37.
LieblerC. A. (2016). On the boundaries of race: Identification of mixed-heritage children in the United States, 1960 to 2010. Sociology of Race & Ethnicity, 2, 548-568. doi:10.1177/2332649216632546
38.
MartinC.ParkerS. (1995). Folk theories of sex and race differences. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21, 45-57. doi: 10.1177/0146167295211006
39.
MandalaywalaT.AmodioD. M.RhodesM. (in press). Essentialism promotes racial prejudice by increasing endorsement of social hierarchies. Social Psychological and Personality Science. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1177/1948550617707020
40.
MedinD. L. (1989). Concepts and conceptual structure. American Psychologist, 44, 1469-1481.
41.
MeyerM.LeslieS. J.GelmanS. A.StilwellS. M. (2013). Essentialist beliefs about bodily transplants in the United States and India. Cognitive Science, 34, 668-719. doi: 10.1111/cogs.1202
42.
PahlkeE.HydeJ. S. (2016). The debate over single-sex schooling. Child Development Perspectives, 10, 81-86. doi:10.111/cdep.12167
43.
PehrsonS.BrownR.ZagefkaH. (2009). When does national identification lead to the rejection of immigrants? Cross-sectional and longitudinal evidence for the role of essentialist in-group definitions. British Journal of Social Psychology, 48, 61-76. doi:10.1348/014466608X288827
PrattoF.SidaniusJ.StallworthL. M.MalleB. F. (1994). Social dominance orientation: A personality variable predicting social and political attitudes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67, 741-763. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.67.4.741
46.
PrenticeD. A.MillerD. T. (2007). Psychological essentialism of human categories. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 16, 202-206. doi: 10.111/j.1467-8721.2007.00504.x
47.
RhodesM.GelmanS. A. (2009a). A developmental examination of the conceptual structure of animal, artifact, and human social categories across two cultural contexts. Cognitive Psychology, 59, 244-274. doi:10.1016/j.cogpsych.2009.05.001
48.
RhodesM.GelmanS. A. (2009b). Five-year-olds’ beliefs about the discreteness of category boundaries for animals and artifacts. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 16, 920-924. doi:10.3758/PBR.16.5.920
49.
RhodesM.MandalaywalaT. M. (2017). The development and developmental consequences of social essentialism. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 8(4), e1437. doi:10.1002/wcs.1437
50.
RobertsS. O.GelmanS. A. (2015). Do children see in Black and White? Children’s and adults’ categorizations of multiracial individuals. Child Development, 86, 1830-1847. doi:10.1111/cdev.12410
51.
RobertsS. O.GelmanS. A. (2016). Can White children grow up to be Black? Children’s reasoning about the stability of emotion and race. Developmental Psychology, 52, 887-893. doi:10.1037/dev0000132
52.
RobertsS. O.GelmanS. A. (2017a). Multiracial children’s categorizations of multiracial individuals. Journal of Cognition and Development, 18, 1-15. doi:10.1080/15248372.2015.1086772
53.
RobertsS. O.GelmanS. A. (2017b). Can White children grow up to be Black? Children’s reasoning about the stability of emotion and race. Developmental Psychology, 52, 887-893. doi: 10.1037/dev0000132.
54.
RobertsS. O.GelmanS. A. (2017c). Now you see race, now you don’t: Verbal cues influence children’s racial stability judgments. Cognitive Development, 43, 129-141. doi:10.1016/j.cogdev.2017.03.003
55.
RosenthalL.LevyS. R. (2010). The colorblind, multicultural, and polycultural ideological approaches to improving intergroup attitudes and relations. Social Issues and Policy Review, 4, 215-246. doi: 10.1111/j.1751-2409.2010.01022.x
56.
RothbartM.TaylorM. (1992). Category labels and social reality: Do we view social categories as natural kinds? In SeminG. R.FiedlerK. (Eds.), Language, interaction, and social cognition (pp. 11-36). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
57.
ShuttsK.Pemberton RobenC. K.SpelkeE. (2013). Children’s use of social categories in thinking about people and social relationships. Journal of Cognition and Development, 14, 35-62. doi: 10.1080/15248372.2011.638686
SmilerA. P.GelmanS. A. (2008). Determinants of gender essentialism in college students. Sex Roles, 58, 864-874. doi:10.1007/s11199-008-9402-x
60.
TaylorM. G.RhodesM.GelmanS. A. (2009). The development of children’s beliefs about gender and animal development. Child Development, 80, 461-481. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-86242009.01272.x
WilliamsM. L.EberhardtJ. L. (2008). Biological conceptions of race and the motivation to cross racial boundaries. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94, 1033-1047. doi:10.1033/0022-3514.94.6.1033
63.
YzerbytV. Y.CorneilleO.EstradaC. (2001). The interplay of subjective essentialism and entitativity in the formation of stereotypes. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 5, 141-155. doi: 10.1207/S15327957PSPR0502_5
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
