Essentialist Thinking Research Articles

Ameliorative projects, psychological essentialism, and the power of nouns

Ameliorative projects design and propagate new linguistic content for some expressions we use for political or social justice purposes. These projects are often driven by an anti‐essentialist agenda: they aim to debunk the idea that social categories such as “woman”, “man”, or “race” are constituted by natural essences. But critics argue that nouns tend to trigger essentialist thinking. And because ameliorative projects typically retain nouns, it is argued that these projects cannot achieve their anti‐essentialist goals. In response, I argue that the psychological effects of noun use tend to support, rather than hinder, the anti‐essentialist goals of ameliorators.

The core of division: Examining how essentialist views of the U.S. underlie right‐wing authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, and nationalism

AbstractWe propose that political polarization stems in part from differing conceptions of one's nation. Four studies tested the hypothesis that national essentialism – conceiving one's nation as possessing an inherent, unchanging essence – underlies three political ideologies: right‐wing authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, and nationalism. Study 1 (n = 263) provides correlational evidence that essentialist thinking about the U.S. positively predicted all three ideological variables, as well as support for conservative policies regarding religion, taxes, the environment, and immigration. Converging experiments show that prompting participants to think about the U.S.’s essence increased support for RWA and nationalism, but not SDO. Study 2 (n = 164) compared an essentialist to a non‐essentialist framing of the U.S., while Study 3 (n = 150) compared essentialist framings of the U.S. to an unrelated concept (music). Parallel mediation analyses show that support for RWA and nationalism mediated the relationship between primed national essentialism and support for conservative policy positions. Study 4 (n = 174) directly replicated Study 2 and went further to test mediators, showing that perceptions of intergroup threat mediated the effect of national essentialism on RWA, while national identification mediated the effect of national essentialism on nationalism. Data and materials are publicly available at: (https://osf.io/srvxk/?view_only=d803fbf4c59c4b7e912f5a345ddb09b9)

Gender-inclusive language in midwifery and perinatal services: A guide and argument for justice.

Effective communication in relation to pregnancy and birth is crucial to quality care. A recent focus in reproductive healthcare on "sexed language" reflects an ideology of unchangeable sex binary and fear of erasure, from both cisgender women and the profession of midwifery. In this paper, we highlight how privileging sexed language causes harm to all who birth-including pregnant trans, gender diverse, and non-binary people-and is, therefore, unethical and incompatible with the principles of midwifery. We show how this argument, which conflates midwifery with essentialist thinking, is unstable, and perpetuates and misappropriates midwifery's marginalized status. We also explore how sex and gender essentialism can be understood as colonialist, heteropatriarchal, and universalist, and therefore, reinforcing of these harmful principles. Midwifery has both the opportunity and duty to uphold reproductive justice. Midwifery can be a leader in the decolonization of childbirth and in defending the rights of all childbearing people, the majority of whom are cisgender women. As the systemwide use of inclusive language is central to this commitment, we offer guidance in relation to how inclusive language in perinatal and midwifery services may be realized.

Cultural Lenses and Biological Filters On What Makes a Hungarian in the Present and in the Distant Past

The definition of a memoir is “an account of the personal experiences of an author.” This paper provides the reflections of a physical (biological) anthropologist specializing in the genetics of the Indigenous peoples of North America who was born in Hungary, raised in Canada, and served twelve years as president and vice chancellor of the University of Manitoba. This professional background may question the relevance of these reflections to Hungarian studies. However, issues raised by János Kenyeres, the keynote speaker of the 2019 American Hungarian Educators Association conference, in his examination of Hungarian identity manifest in Hungarian literature—specifically, regarding “essentialist thinking”—are related to fundamental issues about the nature of human diversity with which physical (biological) anthropologists have been grappling since the eighteenth century. In an era in which commercial genetic genealogical services promise to identify ancestors and ethnicity, and genetic studies of living peoples as well as archaeogenomic studies of skeletal remains seek to identify relationships, current perspectives on what does—or does not—constitute “the essence of an individual and the groups to which one belongs” are worth considering. Facts, wherever they occur, are subject to interpretation. It is the cultural interpretation that we give to genetic identity that imbues that concept with meaning. emoke.szathmary@umanitoba.ca

How essentialist reasoning about language acquisition relates to educational myths and policy endorsements

How people conceptualize learning is related to real-world educational consequences across many domains of education. Despite its centrality to the educational system, we know little about how the public reasons about language acquisition, and the potential consequences for their thinking about real-world issues (e.g., policy endorsements). The current studies examined people’s essentialist beliefs about language acquisition (e.g., that language is innate and biologically based), then investigated how individual differences in these beliefs related to the endorsement of educational myths and policies. We probed several dimensions of essentialist beliefs, including that language acquisition is innate, genetically based, and wired in the brain. In two studies, we tested specific hypotheses regarding the extent to which people use essentialist thinking when reasoning about: learning a specific language (e.g., Korean), learning a first language more generally, and learning two or more languages. Across studies, participants were more likely to essentialize the ability to learn multiple languages than one’s first language, and more likely to essentialize the learning of multiple languages and one’s first language than the learning of a particular language. We also found substantial individual differences in the degree to which participants essentialized language acquisition. In both studies, these individual differences correlated with an endorsement of language-related educational neuromyths (Study 1 and pre-registered Study 2), and rejection of educational policies that promote multilingual education (Study 2). Together, these studies reveal the complexity of how people reason about language acquisition and its corresponding educational consequences.

Post-Nietzschean Contributions to Translation

Post-Nietzschean thought has subverted the metaphysics of essentialist Platonic thinking about meaning. It has made significant contributions to elevating translation to a superior position after being considered inferior and secondary by essentialist thinking for more than two millennia. The purpose of this paper is to answer the question: What insights do we gain from post-Nietzschean thought into meaning, and how might these impact the future of translation? We will shed light on some of the significant post-Nietzschean contributions that have paved the way for various insights into translation. These insights primarily contradict the essentialist viewpoint on the concept of meaning in translation, which has long regarded translation as inferior to the original. This paper adopts a corpus-based method that focuses mainly on Jorge Luis Borges’ enriching analysis of The Translators of The Thousand and One Night and Jacques Derrida’s reasonable letter entitled A Letter to a Japanese Friend. It also incorporates some other relevant arguments, including the work of Rosemary Arrojo, which contrasts many key post-Nietzschean contributions to provide anti-platonic perspectives on translation’s role in the formation of meaning and identity. This study suggests that post-Nietzschean perspectives on meaning may prompt us to reconsider our understanding of meaning and the original text, as well as our approach to translating and teaching translation.

The Weltanschauung of Howard Rachlin: Interdependencies among behaviors and contexts.

Through his broad perspectives and curiosity, Howard Rachlin took behaviorism, added critical perspectives and behavioral economics, and contributed substantially to developing behaviorism as an approach to addressing complex human actions and engagements. This essay describes the influence of Rachlin's work in three areas that reflect this broader growth of the field: 1) teleological behaviorism as a response to essentialist thinking about behavior, typified by Ryle's category mistake and including concepts in psychopathology; 2) self-control as choices among rewards differing by amount and delay and the application of this model to clinical and preventive interventions; and 3) behavioral economic modeling of social support as a commodity substitutable for other commodities of interest such as nicotine. These and the body of Rachlin's work suggest a view not only of interdependencies among behaviors, patterns of behavior, and their consequences, but more broadly, of interdependencies among different settings and their effects on behavior, leading to a behaviorism of systems and contexts. Replacing essentialist discourse of individuals, individual behaviors, and discrete influences, a world view or Weltanschauung emerges of diffuse interdependencies across patterns, individuals, settings, systems, probabilities, and consequences.

Mindsets of criminality: predicting punitive and rehabilitative attitudes

ABSTRACT Should the goal of criminal justice be to make sure offenders get their ‘just deserts’? In the current work, we investigate why some people believe that criminal offenders should be punished. The primary goal is to explore how mindsets about the nature of criminal behavior predict punitive and rehabilitative attitudes. Drawing on the Double-Edged Sword (DES) model of mindsets in stigmatized domains, we predicted that mindsets about the relative changeability (growth mindsets) or stability (fixed mindsets) of criminality will have contradictory indirect effects on these attitudes. Across three preregistered studies (N = 1,089), in addition to finding that growth mindsets overall predicted less punitive attitudes, we found support for the DES model. That is, growth mindsets indirectly predicted less punitive and more rehabilitative attitudes via reduced essentialist thinking but stronger punitive and weaker rehabilitative attitudes via greater blame. Our findings extend the DES model to the domain of criminality, suggest avenues for additional research, and offer applications for fostering growth mindsets that keep the benefits without the costs.

How language shapes our minds: On the relationship between generics, stereotypes and social norms

In this article, we discuss the role of labels and generics referring to social kinds in mindshaping practices, arguing that they promote generalizations that foster essentialist thinking and carry a normative force. We propose that their cognitive function consists in both contributing to the formation and reinforcement of schemata and scripts for social interaction and in activating these schemata in specific social situations. Moreover, we suggest that failure to meet the expectations engendered by these schemata and scripts leads to the activation of “reactive attitudes” embedded in feedback loops of reactive exchange that are constitutive of our mindshaping practices.

Intuitive biological thinking in Chinese 8th graders

People spontaneously engage in systematic ways of thinking about biology such as human exceptionalism (the tendency of viewing human species as separate from nonhuman species), essentialism (the tendency of assuming category membership as determined by an underlying essence), and teleology (the tendency of seeing purpose as the cause). However, with the majority of past research drawn on Western samples, little is known about whether various types of intuitive biological thinking apply to non-Western contexts. To better understand the nature and cultural prevalence of intuitive biological thinking, we measured essentialist, teleological, and human exceptionalist thinking in a group of Chinese 8th graders. Results demonstrated the presence of all three types of intuitive biological thinking in Chinese middle schoolers, and comparisons with previously published data on U.S. 8th graders showed consistently less human exceptionalism and slightly higher essentialist thinking in China. As such, the current results highlight the prevalence of intuitive biological thinking in an East Asian sample while addressing the potential role of cultural inputs in shaping the way such thinking manifests.

Effects of Biological Determinism on Beliefs and Attitudes About Transgender People: Psychological Essentialism and Biased Assimilation.

This experimental study examined the effects of biological attributions on individuals' beliefs and attitudes toward transgender people and the moderating role of right-wing authoritarianism (RWA). We randomly assigned 183 Chinese university students (men: n = 85, women: n = 98) to read one of three fictitious articles. The first article suggested that transgender identity was causally linked to biology (biological determinist condition), the second one highlighted the interplay between biological and environmental factors (epigenetic condition), whereas the third article did not mention the origins of transgender identity (control condition). Consistent with the biased assimilation hypothesis, the effects of biological attributions depended on individual differences in RWA. Low-RWA participants showed higher levels of naturalness and discreteness/homogeneity beliefs about transgender identity in the biological determinist condition than those in the control condition. By contrast, high-RWA participants displayed higher levels of discreteness/homogeneity beliefs but similar levels of naturalness beliefs when they read the biological determinist message compared with the control group. Low-RWA participants showed higher levels of naturalness but similar levels of discreteness/homogeneity beliefs in the epigenetic condition compared with the control, whereas high-RWA participants exhibited lower levels of naturalness and higher levels of discreteness/homogeneity beliefs when they read the epigenetic message compared with the control group. This study also suggests that, contrary to attribution theory, presenting information regarding the biological basis of transgender identity does not necessarily lead to more positive attitudes because (a) it triggers essentialist thinking and (b) the effects of biological attributions depend on recipients' authoritarian dispositions.

Social essentialism in the United States and China: How social and cognitive factors predict within- and cross-cultural variation in essentialist thinking.

People intuitively view some social groups (such as Black people, Muslims, and women) as having biological underpinnings and discrete boundaries. Essentialist beliefs about social groups shape how people view themselves and others, leading to a number of negative social consequences. Whereas previous research has demonstrated variations in social essentialism within some Western societies, less is known about how social essentialism manifests in East Asian cultures that have well-documented differences in social values and cognitive styles from Western cultures. The current research investigated cultural variations in social essentialist thinking in the United States and China to reveal how cultural ideologies and social belief systems shape people’s basic representations of the social world. Analyses revealed several cultural and social correlates of social essentialism both between and within the cultures and demonstrated the mediating role of collectivistic values in predicting cultural differences in essentialist beliefs about group coherence.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.3758/s13421-022-01306-1.

Genetic and Environmental Influences on Biological Essentialism, Heuristic Thinking, Need for Closure, and Conservative Values: Insights From a Survey and Twin Study.

Biological essentialism, the belief that human attributes are determined by biology, is a core component of essentialist thinking. Previous studies have shown that individual differences in essentialist thinking are associated with heuristic thinking, cognitive ability and style, conservative values, and prejudice. None, however, have examined whether biological essentialism is itself heritable, or the extent to which familial aggregation explains associations with core correlates. In order to do this, we analyzed data from a genetically informative sample of families with twins in Australia (N = 2,103), as well as general population samples from the UK (N = 501) and the US (N = 500). Genetic factors had little influence in individual differences in biological essentialism or in its relationship with heuristic thinking. Conservative values were genetically correlated with cognitive styles (i.e., need for closure and heuristic thinking). These findings support a bigger role of genes in explaining the relationship between cognitive processes and moral reasoning and ideology than they do the association between cognitive processes and essentialist thinking.

A Relationalist Rethinking of Destructive Events

ABSTRACT The purpose of this article is to show how William James's thought can help to construct a critical approach to the conceptualization of unexpected destructive events and suggest modes of conceptualization that reduce social injustice. I draw on several interrelated themes in James's thought, including, but not limited to: metaphysical and moral relationalism, the tragedy of choice, and the psychology of selective attention (with particular emphasis on its consequences for ethical pluralism). Specifically, I argue that James provides resources for mounting a criticism of a kind of essentialist thinking about unexpected events; for showing how this essentialism can create social injustice by obfuscating social choices and causing marginalized groups to bear a disproportionate share of social costs; for helping to construct a pluralistic approach to unexpected events that makes transparent the tragic choices laying behind them; and for putting this approach to use in ways that mitigate social injustice.

On Decolonising and Indigenising ScottishGàidhligStudies: A Rejoinder to Armstrong et al.

In their response to my Scottish Affairs article ‘Recovering and Reconstituting Gàidheal Ethnicity’, Armstrong et al. present misleading and misinformed beliefs about my views on identity and indigeneity. In doing so they distort and divert from my article’s focus. Armstrong et al.’s own views on identity and indigeneity not only contain problematic claims relating to ancestry and race, but also disclose superficial essentialist thinking. Indigeneity is not decided by abstract theorising or legal fiat, as Armstrong et al. propose. Instead, the contemporary emergence of indigeneity in the Gàidhealtachd is happening in community settings among many self-identifying and community recognised or affirmed Gàidheil, and with support from those working in allyship. It is developing, and apparently intensifying, in relation to real-world experiences, concerns and aspirations. This development has global resonance and offers the best hope for the resurgence of Gàidheil as a historically, culturally and place-grounded people, including language revitalisation.

The Impact of Deconstruction on the Lithuanian Literary Criticism

In the article I discuss how deconstruction (Jacques Derrida and other Yale School participants) came to Lithuanian literary criticism and how it changed habits of humanitarian thinking during the three decades after independence. The most unusual and radical deconstruction critique of essentialist metaphysical thinking, new terminology (inter-text, elimination of center, footprint, writing, difference, blinding, labyrinth narrative, guest / enemy, etc.) and new strategies for interpreting texts were very important for Lithuanian humanities liberated from Soviet ideology. Literary critics have noticed and discussed the undoubted connection between postmodernist literature and its deconstructive reading.We can find three tendencies in the deconstructive criticism of Lithuanian literature. The first tendency is the interpretation of general theoretical concepts of deconstruction, second tendency - searching the deconstructive features in literary works and the third tendency of criticism, expanding its own self-criticism and self-irony, is discussing chrestomathic and structuralist interpretations of the literary works or deconstructing icons of Soviet culture. We know very well, that many feminist, postcolonial, historiographic, anthropological, or interdisciplinary researches of literature cannot escape the effects of deconstruction.

Explanation of Ancestry Estimation in Forensic Anthropology Textbooks

The way we teach about race and racism can have profound impacts on undergraduate learners, both positive and negative. Textbooks represent a space in which hidden curriculum about race can cement misconceptions and biologically essentialist thinking, leading to the ongoing support of practices that harm racially minoritized populations. In this study, I critically examine five popular introductory level, undergraduate, forensic anthropology textbooks, with attention to chapters on ancestry estimation, and offer recommendations for supplementary or alternative content. Specific coverage of core concepts related to race and ancestry estimation practices in forensic anthropology are evaluated, as well as the order of presentation and consistency of key messages. Though each chapter focuses on distinct examples and approaches, none cover all of the concepts or present a consistent message about ancestry estimation as it pertains to the biological race concept. In particular, messaging within each chapter demonstrates some ambiguity in the distinction between race and ancestry, while also presenting a narrative through which racial typology practices are delineated as “in the past” and distinct from current ancestry estimation practices. These results demonstrate a need, at the undergraduate level, for a more explicit discussion of the biological race myth in lieu of traditional approaches that focus on demonstrating the practicality and validity of such methods. Finally, detailed presentations of ancestry estimation

Public misconceptions about dyslexia: The role of intuitive psychology.

Despite advances in its scientific understanding, dyslexia is still associated with rampant public misconceptions. Here, we trace these misconceptions to the interaction between two intuitive psychological principles: Dualism and Essentialism. We hypothesize that people essentialize dyslexia symptoms that they anchor in the body. Experiment 1 shows that, when dyslexia is associated with visual confusions (b/d reversals)-symptoms that are naturally viewed as embodied (in the eyes), laypeople consider dyslexia as more severe, immutable, biological, and heritable, compared to when dyslexia is linked to difficulties with phonological decoding (a symptom seen as less strongly embodied). Experiments 2-3 show that the embodiment of symptoms plays a causal role in promoting essentialist thinking. Experiment 2 shows that, when participants are provided evidence that the symptoms of dyslexia are embodied (i.e., they "show up" in a brain scan), people are more likely to consider dyslexia as heritable compared to when the same symptoms are diagnosed behaviorally (without any explicit evidence for the body). Finally, Experiment 3 shows that reasoning about the severity of dyslexia symptoms can be modulated by manipulating people's attitudes about the mind/body links, generally. These results show how public attitudes towards psychological disorders arise from the very principles that make the mind tick.

“Go Faster!”: Adults’ Essentialist Representation of Gender and National Identity, but Not Race, Is Revealed by Cognitive Demand

ABSTRACT Essentialism is the intuition that category membership relies on an invisible essence. Essentialist thinking about social categories is most evident in young children, while comparable methods do not reveal essentialist thinking about social groups in adult participants. However, previous work has found that essentialist thinking about gender was measurable in adults who experienced cognitive demand. In this paper, we studied essentialist intuitions about national identity, race, and gender, in adults under cognitive demand. We found that adults under cognitive demand essentialized national identity and gender more than adults who had time to deliberate, though cognitive demand had no effect on essentialist intuitions about race. Additionally, we found evidence that adults’ essentialist intuitions were strongest for gender, followed by race, and then national identity. The asymmetry in essentialism levels across the three studies suggests that there may be different mental representations for different social categories.

Türkiye’den Bir Örneklemde Cinsiyet, Irk ve Dile Dayalı Esasçı Düşüncenin Gelişimi

Developmental studies suggest that children think in essentialist terms about social categories and view social category membership as natural and stable. This study aims to examine 6-to-10-year-old children’s essentialist views about gender, race, and language in a sample from Turkey. These are all categories with underlying perceptual markers, but they are likely to differ in terms of their cultural relevance within this context. In addition to these categories, essentialist beliefs about sports team fans were also examined as a reference category. A measure that captures different aspects of essentialist thinking including biology, change, and environment, and was previously used to study essentialist beliefs about different social categories in the same cultural context with a similar age group, was used. The results showed that around the age of 6 years, children did not distinguish among various social categories in their essentialist reasoning; however, with age, they gradually distinguished among some categories. Despite the differences in their cultural relevance within the context of Turkey, gender and race showed very similar patterns in how they were essentialized over age, both overall, and also with respect to different individual dimensions related to essentialist thinking. Essentialist thinking about both of these categories remained relatively stable across age. In terms of language, while overall essentialism scores remained stable across age, a substantial decrease in beliefs about capacity for changing one’s group membership was observed across age, when membership is based on language. Finally, children’s essentialist thinking about sports team fans decreased considerably with age. These findings are discussed in light of previous studies focusing on these categories in contexts, where the cultural saliency of the categories likely differ, in an attempt to offer a better understanding of the mechanisms contributing to the development of social essentialism.