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The Essentialized Self: Implications for Motivation and Self‐Regulation
Author(s) -
Oyserman Daphna
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
journal of consumer psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 4.433
H-Index - 110
eISSN - 1532-7663
pISSN - 1057-7408
DOI - 10.1002/jcpy.1093
Subject(s) - persuasion , essentialism , psychology , perspective (graphical) , situated cognition , identity (music) , situated , cognition , social psychology , social cognition , natural (archaeology) , cognitive psychology , epistemology , aesthetics , philosophy , archaeology , artificial intelligence , neuroscience , computer science , history
Persuasion attempts are more likely to stick and less likely to be counterargued if they fit the ways people naturally make sense of themselves and their world. One way to do that is to yoke persuasion to the social categories people experience as “true” and “natural.” Gelman and Echelbarger's (2019) integrative review of essentialism outlines the emergence of essentialism in children's reasoning. Connecting their discussion with identity‐based motivation theory (D. Oyserman, 2015) and a culture‐as‐situated cognition (D. Oyserman, 2017) perspective, this commentary addresses how an essentialized self can facilitate or impair motivation and self‐regulation and potentiate or undermine persuasive efforts.