In the contemporary world of human mobility, one of the key problems is why different groups of people are welcomed in some places, but are driven away from others. Theoretical writings of geographers, sociologists, and architects suggest that place can be defined in two ways—as an essentialist, bounded entity with historical continuity or as an open, anti-essentialist space, supporting changes. We hypothesized that in the minds of lay people, these two types of places allow for either a small or high level of ethnic diversity, and thus a certain view of a place would have consequences for acceptance of outgroup members in that place. In three online experimental studies participants were asked to think of a real or imagined place focusing on its specific features, which were either essentialist or anti-essentialist. A consistent pattern of findings showed that conceiving of a place as anti-essentialist was related to greater openness towards the presence of ethnic outgroup members in that place compared to perceiving it as essentialist. Our study contributes to understanding which features of a particular place may foster its perception as more open and inclusive and, conversely, which features are related to a representation of the place as closed and unfriendly to certain ethnic groups.

在当今的人类流动世界中，关键问题之一就是为什么不同的人群在某些地方会受到欢迎，而在某些地方却被驱逐。地理学家，社会学家和建筑师的理论著作提出，可以用两种方式来定义场所：作为具有历史连续性的本质主义者，有界实体或支持变化的开放，反本质主义者的空间。我们假设，在外行人的心中，这两种类型的场所允许较小或高度的种族多样性，因此，对该场所的某种看法将对该场所中的外来成员的接受产生影响。在三项在线实验研究中，参与者被要求思考一个真实的或想象中的地方，重点关注其本质特征，即本质主义或反本质主义。一致的调查结果表明，将一个地方视为反基本主义者与认为该地区是本质主义者相比，对该地区的种族外来成员存在更大的开放度有关。我们的研究有助于理解特定地方的哪些特征可能会促进人们对其开放性和包容性的认识，反之，哪些特征与该地方对某些种族群体的封闭和不友好的表征有关。