ABSTRACT

Essentialism is the intuition that category membership relies on an invisible essence. Essentialist thinking about social categories is most evident in young children, while comparable methods do not reveal essentialist thinking about social groups in adult participants. However, previous work has found that essentialist thinking about gender was measurable in adults who experienced cognitive demand. In this paper, we studied essentialist intuitions about national identity, race, and gender, in adults under cognitive demand. We found that adults under cognitive demand essentialized national identity and gender more than adults who had time to deliberate, though cognitive demand had no effect on essentialist intuitions about race. Additionally, we found evidence that adults’ essentialist intuitions were strongest for gender, followed by race, and then national identity. The asymmetry in essentialism levels across the three studies suggests that there may be different mental representations for different social categories.

摘要

本质主义是类别成员依赖于无形本质的直觉。对社会类别的本质主义思考在幼儿中最为明显，而类似的方法并未揭示成人参与者对社会群体的本质主义思考。然而，以前的工作发现，在经历过认知需求的成年人中，对性别的本质主义思考是可以测量的。在本文中，我们研究了在认知需求下成年人对国家认同、种族和性别的本质主义直觉。我们发现，认知需求下的成年人比有时间深思熟虑的成年人更能本质化国家认同和性别，尽管认知需求对种族的本质主义直觉没有影响。此外，我们发现证据表明成年人的本质主义直觉对性别最强，其次是种族，然后是民族认同。三项研究中本质主义水平的不对称性表明，不同社会类别可能存在不同的心理表征。