Are essentialist beliefs associated with prejudice?

Abstract

Gordon Allport (1954) proposed that belief in group essences is one aspect of the prejudiced personality, alongside a rigid, dichotomous and ambiguity-intolerant cognitive style. We examined whether essentialist beliefs-beliefs that a social category has a fixed, inherent, identity-defining nature-are indeed associated in this fashion with prejudice towards black people, women and gay men. Allport's claim, which is mirrored by many contemporary social theorists, received partial support but had to be qualified in important respects. Essence-related beliefs were associated strongly with anti-gay attitudes but only weakly with sexism and racism, and they did not reflect a cognitive style that was consistent across stigmatized categories. When associations with prejudice were obtained, only a few specific beliefs were involved, and some anti-essentialist beliefs were associated with anti-gay attitudes. Nevertheless, the powerful association that essence-related beliefs had with anti-gay attitudes was independent of established prejudice-related traits, indicating that they have a significant role to play in the psychology of prejudice.

Predicting opposition to the civil rights of trans persons in the United Kingdom

“…Like others, we found Swim et al's (1994) scale to be unreliable (see e.g., Haslam et al, 2002). Our student sample was of modest size.…”

“…Here, more prejudiced participants endorsed items about the biological basis of gender identity. However heterosexist people are more likely to reject than to accept that sexual orientation has a biological basis (Haslam & Levi, in press;Haslam et al, 2002;Hegarty, 2002;Hegarty & Pratto, 2001b). The different might depend upon the practical implications of biological determinism for different minorities.…”

“…Heterosexism is strongest among heterosexuals who consider sexual orientation to be changeable, yet also a fundamental basis for categorizing people (Haslam & Levi, in press;Haslam, Rothschild, & Ernst, 2002;Hegarty, 2002;Hegarty & Pratto, 2001). Yet relationships between prejudice and essentialist beliefs vary between domains and cannot be easily generalized between them (Haslam et al, 2002). We constructed a measure of beliefs about transsexuality loosely based on Hegarty and Pratto's (2001) measure of beliefs about sexual orientation, and explored the relationship between essentialist beliefs about prejudice toward trans people.…”

Cultural transmission of social essentialism

“…Indeed, in study 3, parents who were induced to hold essentialist beliefs about Zarpies were more likely to produce negative evaluative statements about them. Thus, these data suggest that inducing essentialism may contribute to negative social attitudes (13,16,(38)(39)(40). Understanding the mechanisms that underlie the development of social essentialism could provide guidance on how to disrupt these processes, and thus perhaps on how to Numbers in parentheses are means +/− SE.…”

“…When applied to social categories, psychological essentialism can have pernicious consequences, however. As suggested by Allport's observations, essentialist beliefs about social categories (hereinafter referred to as "social essentialism") facilitate social stereotyping and prejudice (13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18). For example, social essentialism facilitates the belief that because one girl is bad at math, girls in general will be bad at math, or that because one member of a racial group commits a criminal act, the group must share a criminal nature (13,16).…”