title: How does social essentialism affect the development of inter-group relations?
abstract: Psychological essentialism is a pervasive conceptual bias to view categories as reflecting something deep, stable, and informative about their members. Scholars from diverse disciplines have long theorized that psychological essentialism has negative ramifications for inter-group relations, yet little previous empirical work has experimentally tested the social implications of essentialist beliefs. Three studies (N = 127, ages 4.5-6) found that experimentally inducing essentialist beliefs about a novel social category led children to share fewer resources with category members, but did not lead to the out-group dislike that defines social prejudice. These findings indicate that essentialism negatively influences some key components of inter-group relations, but does not lead directly to the development of prejudice.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, USA.
authors.forename: Marjorie
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Rhodes
authors.affiliation: Department of Philosophy, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA.
authors.forename: Sarah-Jane
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Leslie
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, USA.
authors.forename: Katya
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Saunders
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.
authors.forename: Yarrow
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Dunham
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, USA.
authors.forename: Andrei
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Cimpian
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011287:Prejudice / Q000523:psychology*; D012938:Social Perception; D013240:Stereotyping