Value-based essentialism: Essentialist beliefs about social groups with shared values.

Abstract

Psychological essentialism has played an important role in social psychology, informing influential theories of stereotyping and prejudice as well as questions about wrongdoers' accountability and their ability to change. In the existing literature, essentialism is often tied to beliefs in shared biology-i.e., the extent to which members of a social group are seen as having the same underlying biological features. Here we investigate the possibility of "value-based essentialism" in which people think of certain social groups in terms of an underlying essence, but that essence is understood as a value. Study 1 explored beliefs about a wide range of social groups and found that both groups with shared biology (e.g., women) and shared values (e.g., hippies) elicited similar general essentialist beliefs relative to more incidental social categories (e.g., English-speakers). In Studies 2-4, participants who read about a group either as being based in biology or in values reported higher general essentialist beliefs compared to a control condition. Because biological essences about social groups have been connected to a number of downstream consequences, we also investigated two test cases concerning value-based essentialism. In Study 3, beliefs about both shared biology and shared values increased inductive generalizations about the social group relative to control, but in Study 4, only the shared biology condition reduced blame for wrongdoing. Together these findings join with recent work to support a broader theoretical framework of essentialism about social groups that can be arrived at through multiple pathways, including, in the present case, shared values.

Biological Essentialism Correlates with (But Doesn’t Cause?) Intergroup Bias

“…Next, participants indicated their essentialist beliefs about the Daxes. There were three more general essentialist items that were found to cohere in prior work-capturing: knowledge deference, appearance/reality distinction, and deep similarity among category members (Bailey et al, 2021; see also Medin & Ortony, 1989). There were also two items-biological essence and scientific cause-that captured the belief that the essence was something specifically biological (and two about it being specifically value-based).…”

“…participants read articles about Jewish people designed to increase essentialist beliefs relative to the control condition. Articles were shortened for brevity, but we did not use deception and none of the information was fabricated (materials adapted from Bailey et al, 2021). In the biological essence condition, participants read information that highlighted biological aspects of Jewish identity, e.g., "Jewish genetic screening."…”

“…We assumed that intergroup bias would depend on whether participants were told that a social group had a biological essence (biological essence condition) or no essence (control condition). Our question was what would happen when participants were told that the group had an essence defined by shared values ("value-based" essentialism condition; inspired by Bailey et al, 2021 andKnobe, 2019). We set out to test whether bias in our novel value-based essence condition would be more like our biological essence condition or the control condition.…”

“They're Not True Humans:” Beliefs about Moral Character Drive Denials of Humanity

“…According to the reading elaborated on above, this phrase means that X does not satisfy the normative criteria associated with being an F. According to the other reading, it means that X does not belong to the natural kind associated with Fs (e.g., see Tobia et al, 2020). If the folk regard the category Homo sapiens as a natural kind, then they may regard the phrase "true human" as ambiguous between the natural-kind reading and the normative reading (for some analogous cases involving race and gender concepts, see Bailey et al, 2021;Guo et al, 2021). To preempt this potential ambiguity, I utilized statements that contrast the claim that the target is/isn't a "true human" with the claim that the target isn't/is human in the "biological sense."…”

Psychological essentialism and the structure of concepts

“…While more research is needed to put Newman and Knobe's ‘general essentialism’ to the test, recent results look promising: Bailey et al. (2020) found that value‐based forms of essentialism and ‘causal essentialism’ elicit similar beliefs and inductive inferences.…”