This is a report on a series of studies conducted in the field with methodology approximating lab experimental methods to the degree possible. The studies were designed to investigate how human actors process and think about ethnic categories. The motivating hypothesis is that humans essentialize ethnic groups because these resemble “species” in several of their salient properties. The studies tested whether ethnic membership is a matter of enculturation or descent; whether ethnic categories are essentialized, with associated behavioral expectations; and whether physical differences between the two local groups drive the essentialism or if essentializing the categories in the first place drives this perception of physical differences. It was found that membership is held to be a matter of blood, most respondents essentialize the ethnic groups, and the distribution of phenotypes may not justify the extent to which respondents intuit that the contrast ethnic groups differ physically.
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