Explore the vast range of titles available.

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.

Introduction Mental illness stigma is prevalent among Asian Americans, and it is a key barrier that prevents them from seeking psychological services. Limited studies have experimentally examined how Asian Americans respond to biological and social explanations of mental illness. Understanding how to educate and communicate about mental illness effectively is crucial in increasing service utilization among Asian Americans. Purpose To assess how genetic, neurobiological, and social explanations for the onset of depression affects Asian American and European American’s mental illness stigma. Methods 231 Asian Americans and 206 European Americans read about an individual with major depression and were randomly assigned to be informed that the cause was either genetic, neurobiological, social, or unknown. Various stigma outcomes, including social distance, fear, and depression duration were assessed. Results Consistent with prior research, Asian Americans had higher baseline levels of stigma compared to European Americans. Greater social essentialist beliefs predicted positive stigma outcomes for Asian Americans, such as a greater willingness to be near, help, and hire someone with depression, but genetic essentialist beliefs predicted negative stigma outcomes, such as fear. In addition, a social explanation for the etiology of depression led to lower stigma outcomes for Asian Americans; it decreased their fear of someone with depression and increased the perception that depression is treatable. For European Americans, both genetic and social essentialist beliefs predicted a greater perception of depression treatability. Conclusion Although genetics do play a role in the development of depression, emphasizing a social explanation for the origin of depression may help reduce stigma for Asian Americans.

Two studies examined the inductive potential of various social categories among 144 kindergarten, 2nd-, and 6th-grade Israeli children from 3 sectors: secular Jews, religious Jews, and Muslim Arabs. Study 1—wherein social categories were labeled—found that ethnic categories were the most inductively powerful, especially for religious Jewish children. Study 2—wherein no social category labels were provided—found no differences across sectors either in the inductive potential of ethnic categories or in children's capacity to visually recognize social categories. These results stress the importance of labels and cultural background in children's beliefs about social categories. The implications of these findings for accounts of the development of social essentialism are discussed.

This chapter reviews what is known about the development of racial categorization in childhood, and considers when and for whom racial categorization leads to racial stereotyping and prejudice. According to the developmental intergroup theory (DIT), children categorize others along psychologically salient dimensions, and this process of categorization can initiate the formation of stereotypes and prejudice. This theory outlined four main factors that can influence the development of stereotypes and prejudice towards psychologically salient social groups: in‐group bias, explicit attributions in the environment, implicit group/attribute covariation, and essentialism. The chapter also reviews two factors that have received increasing empirical support in recent years: social essentialism and social norms. Social essentialism provides insight into how and when racial categories take on a deeper meaning that might affect the acquisition of racial stereotypes and prejudice, whereas social norms constrain when and whether those category‐based racial judgments and evaluations are acquired and applied.

Biogenetic explanations of mental disorder are increasingly prominent. However, they have decidedly mixed implications for how affected persons are perceived. We review evidence of these mixed blessings from three perspectives: how people with mental disorders are viewed by the public, by themselves, and by clinicians. Although biogenetic explanations may soften public stigma by diminishing blame, they increase it by inducing pessimism, avoidance, and the belief that affected people are dangerous and unpredictable. These explanations may also induce pessimism and helplessness among affected people and reduce the empathy their treating clinicians feel for them. We interpret these findings in light of social psychology research on essentialist and mechanistic thinking.

Racial essentialism is the belief that races are biologically distinct groups with defining core “essences,” a notion associated with increased social distance and racial bias. While there are different kinds of racial essentialism, understanding and measuring genetic essentialism – the belief that racial groups and their defining core essences are determined by genes – is increasingly important in the wake of the Human Genome Project and the genomic revolution that it spurred. Many have questioned whether such genomic advances will reinforce genetic essentialist beliefs about race, but scholarly research is limited by measures that do not specify the role of genes in these beliefs or allow for distinct theoretical sub-components. In this paper, we develop and validate the Genetic Essentialism Scale for Race (GESR) using a sequential transformative mixed methods approach. Data for analysis come from an original survey-based study with a sample of 1069 White native-born Americans. We employ both exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory analysis to derive and confirm a three-factor model of genetic essentialism (category determinism, core determinism, and polygenism). Due to the high correlation between these factors, we also test for a second-order measurement model with three first-order factors. After conducting additional reliability, validity, and construct validity testing, we propose the GESR— a second-order construct with three first-order dimensions— as a reliable measure of genetic essentialism. The GESR will allow researchers to determine the impact of new genetic developments like race-based medicines and genetic ancestry testing on genetic essentialist beliefs about race.

Although research on prejudice against gender and sexual minorities has been increasing in recent years, little attention has been paid to predictors for transprejudice and its potential culture-specific correlates in particular. This cross-sectional study addressed these gaps in the literature by exploring the relative contributions of social dominance orientation, authoritarianism, filial piety, and essentialist beliefs of gender to negative attitudes toward transgender people in 371 Chinese participants. Path analyses showed that (a) consistent with previous research, authoritarianism and social dominance orientation made independent contributions to explaining variance in transprejudice; (b) filial piety, as a culture-specific variable, was a unique predictor for transprejudice beyond the effects of authoritarianism and social dominance orientation; and (c) these relations appeared to be mediated by gender essentialism. Our findings suggest that people with higher levels of authoritarianism and social dominance orientation tend to have stronger essentialist beliefs of gender, which may in turn contribute to the development of transprejudice. It also highlights the importance of identifying culture-specific predictors (e.g., filial piety in a Chinese context) when we attempt to understand transprejudice.

Language use plays a crucial role in the consensualization of stereotypes within cultural groups. Based on an integrative review of the literature on stereotyping and biased language use, we propose the Social Categories and Stereotypes Communication (SCSC) framework. The framework integrates largely independent areas of literature and explicates the linguistic processes through which social-category stereotypes are shared and maintained. We distinguish two groups of biases in language use that jointly feed and maintain three fundamental cognitive variables in (shared) social-category cognition: perceived category entitativity, stereotype content, and perceived essentialism of associated stereotypic characteristics. These are: (1) Biases in linguistic labels used to denote categories, within which we discuss biases in (a) label content and (b) linguistic form of labels; (2) Biases in describing behaviors and characteristics of categorized individuals, within which we discuss biases in (a) communication content (i.e., what information is communicated), and (b) linguistic form of descriptions (i.e., how is information formulated). Together, these biases create a self-perpetuating cycle in which social-category stereotypes are shared and maintained. The framework allows for a better understanding of stereotype maintaining biases in natural language. We discuss various opportunities for further research.

Psychological essentialism is a set of lay beliefs about categories, according to which certain categories are seen as natural and arising from an inborn, causal force or “essence.” Social categories, including gender, are often essentialized by both adults and children. The current study examines how gender essentialism relates to other gender-relevant beliefs and preferences, in both a child sample (5- to 7-year-olds) and an adult sample (the children’s parents). Children’s and parents’ essentialism predicted children’s gender-typed preferences, but not children’s prescriptive stereotyping. In contrast, parents’ essentialism predicted their own prescriptive stereotyping, but not their gender-typed preferences. Implications of these findings are discussed in the contexts of (a) past findings linking essentialism with stereotyping and (b) the practical implications of developmental shifts in the correlates of essentialism, including ways in which stereotyping and rigid beliefs about gender may be reduced.

When explaining the causes of human behavior, genes are often given a special status. They are thought to relate to an intrinsic human ‘essence’, and essentialist biases have been shown to skew the way in which causation is assessed. Causal reasoning in general is subject to other pre-existing biases, including beliefs about normativity and morality. In this synthesis we show how factors which influence causal reasoning can be mapped to a framework of genetic essentialism, which reveals both the shared and unique factors underpinning biases in causal reasoning and genetic essentialism. This comparison identifies overlooked areas of research which could provide fruitful investigation, such as whether normative assessments of behaviors influence the way that genetic causes are ascribed or endorsed. We also outline the importance of distinguishing reasoning processes regarding genetic causal influences on one’s self versus others, as different cognitive processes and biases are likely to be at play.