Psychological Essentialism and the Structure of Concepts

Psychological essentialism is the hypothesis that humans represent some categories as having an underlying essence that unifies members of a category and is causally responsible for their typical attributes and behaviors. Throughout the past several decades, psychological essentialism has emerged as an extremely active area of research in cognitive science. More recently, it has also attracted attention from philosophers, who put the empirical results to use in many different philosophical areas, ranging from philosophy of mind and cognitive science to social philosophy. This article aims to give philosophers who are new to the topic an overview of the key empirical findings surrounding psychological essentialism, and some of the ways the hypothesis and its related findings have been discussed, extended, and applied in philosophical research.

Are we teleologically essentialist?

People may conceptualize certain categories as held together by a category-specific ‘essence’—some un- observable, critical feature that causes the external features of a category to emerge. Yet there remains an open question about what comprises this essence. Recently, Rose and Nichols have argued that this essence is comprised of tele, or purposes, (and, in turn, that teleology is the internal force that gives rise to external features). However, Neufeld has challenged this work on theoretical grounds, arguing that these effects arise only because people infer an underlying internal change when reasoning about a change in telos. On Neufeld’s view, it is the underlying internal cause, and not the telos itself, that serves as an essence (consistent with classic views of scientific essentialism). Here, we ask: Is teleology the primary force behind psychological essentialism? We begin by successfully replicating Rose and Nichols’ key findings in support of teleological essentialism. In two further experiments, however, we demonstrate that teleology may not the central way that people understand the essences of living things: Internal changes matter at least as much as changes to teleology. These findings suggest that while teleology may be one important cue to category membership and the essences of living things, it may be premature to say that we are ‘teleologically essentialist.’

Essentialism in Environmental Psychology: Controversies and Evidence

This paper deals with the issue of psychological essentialism as present in environmental studies. The essentialist belief—that is, the assumption that things have a deep essence that defines their stable identity—has been a recurring theme in environmental psychology. In this paper, I show its relevance for such research areas as environmental perception and the concept of place as a meaningful location. I show that essentialism underlies early phenomenological theories of place and is present in contemporary biophilic theories of environmental perception. I discuss relevant theories and present research findings that justify the claim that people are psychological essentialists when dealing with the physical built environment.

A Tale of Two Perspectives: How Psychology and Neuroscience Contribute to Understanding Personhood

Empirical science, such as psychology and neuroscience, employ diverse methods to develop data driven models and explanations for complex phenomena. In research on the self, differences in these methods produce different depictions of persons. Research in developmental psychology highlights the role of intuitive beliefs, such as psychological essentialism and intuitive dualism, in individuals’ singular, cohesive, and stable sense of self. On the other hand, research in neuroscience highlights the de-centralized, distributed, multitudes of neural networks in competition making selves, with arguments around whether the interpretation of these data imply that the self is somehow fundamental and special to human functioning. In this paper, I explore these discrepant pictures of the self to advance understanding about personhood. Specifically, I suggest that these divergent pictures of self from psychology and neuroscience have the potential to inform philosophical and theological discussions around personhood by anchoring models of persons in empirical views of persons. Likewise, I explore the opportunity for philosophy and theology to inform and enhance scientific research on the self by critiquing scientific bias and construct development as well as highlighting potential limits in understanding selves with empirical models.

Exposure to Literary Fiction Is Associated With Lower Psychological Essentialism

We investigated the impact of exposure to literary and popular fiction on psychological essentialism. Exposure to fiction was measured by using the Author Recognition Test, which allows us to separate exposure to authors of literary and popular fiction. Psychological essentialism was assessed by the discreteness subscale of the psychological essentialism scale in Study 1, and by the three subscales of the same scale (such as discreteness, informativeness, and biological basis) in Study 2 that was pre-registered. Results showed that exposure to literary fiction negatively predicts the three subscales. The results emerged controlling for political ideology, a variable that is commonly associated with psychological essentialism, and level of education.

Essentially Subhuman: Psychological Essentialism Facilitates Dehumanization

Dehumanization has played a prominent role in myriad human atrocities, which inspired us to investigate its social-cognitive basis. Since dehumanization consists of perceiving another to lack a defining human essence, scholars have suggested that this process may be grounded in psychological essentialism, the belief that members of a group all share an underlying essence. Indeed, essentialism predicted Americans’ blatant dehumanization of various national outgroups (Study 1). After demonstrating this relationship, we attempted to mitigate dehumanization by reducing the tendency to think in an essentialist manner. Subjects led to hold an incremental theory about human traits expressed less psychological essentialism than those led to hold an entity theory, and these reductions in essentialism accounted for reductions in dehumanization (Study 2). We conceptually replicated these findings by targeting essentialist beliefs about racial differences (Study 3). This provides a promising foundation for future research to investigate the generalizability of our results and identify potential suppressor variables.

Language as a Social Cue

Social groups are a pervasive feature of human life. One factor that is often understudied in the literature on person perception and social categorization is language. Yet, someone's language (and accent) provides a tremendous amount of social information to a listener. Disciplines across the social and behavioral sciences—ranging from linguistics to anthropology to economics—have exposed the social significance of language. Less social psychological research has historically focused on language as a vehicle for social grouping. Yet, new approaches in psychology are reversing this trend. This article first reviews evidence, primarily from psycholinguistics, documenting how speech provides social information. Next it turns to developmental psychology, showing how young humans begin to see others’ language as conveying social group information. It then explores how the tendency to see language as a social cue has vast implications for people's psychological processes (e.g., psychological essentialism and trust) and also for society, including education and the law.