Downstream consequences of racial essentialism

Abstract

Despite race being a relatively ambiguous and nuanced construct, people readily apply a strong intuitive framework that enables them to understand and conceptualize race via racial essentialism. Racial essentialism is the belief that there is an underlying feature or property that determines racial category membership. This intuitive conception of embodies a set of assumptions about group members and the boundaries between groups. This dissertation had two main aims: 1) to determine whether the two proposed dimensions of racial essentialism are indeed separable and 2) to examine the downstream consequences of the two dimensions. To address these aims, three sets of studies were conducted to link racial essentialism to three cognitive processes. The first part of each study was correlational because these are novel links. The second part of each study aimed to determine causality by isolating and manipulation one essentialism dimension to measure consequences for the corresponding cognitive process. These studies are novel in that they apply the two-dimensional approach, treating essentialism as a framework instead of a monolithic construct. This is a relatively novel approach to studying essentialism as much of the literature measures only one dimension but draws conclusions about the entire construct. The studies presented here demonstrate that the dimensions are indeed separable because they have unique consequences. The implications of these unique relationships for essentialism as a construct will be discussed. The second aim of the dissertation is critical because traditional essentialism research has focused on the social consequences associated with this intuitive thought process, largely ignoring potential cognitive consequences. The three studies link racial essentialism to three unique cognitive outcomes: facial recognition memory, cognitive effort via reading time, and cognitive control via cognitive flexibility. Implications for these associations will be discussed. Racial essentialism is a complicated but pervasive framework and the better we understand the nuance that guides, and perhaps filters, people's engagement in a racialized world, the more readily we can dismantle the misconceptions and prejudice that have long tainted race relations in the United States. --Author's abstract