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Essentialist Beliefs About Bodily Transplants in the United States and India
Author(s) -
Meyer Meredith,
Leslie SarahJane,
Gelman Susan A.,
Stilwell Sarah M.
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
cognitive science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.498
H-Index - 114
eISSN - 1551-6709
pISSN - 0364-0213
DOI - 10.1111/cogs.12023
Subject(s) - essentialism , psychology , social psychology , personality , epistemology , philosophy
Abstract Psychological essentialism is the belief that some internal, unseen essence or force determines the common outward appearances and behaviors of category members. We investigated whether reasoning about transplants of bodily elements showed evidence of essentialist thinking. Both A mericans and I ndians endorsed the possibility of transplants conferring donors' personality, behavior, and luck on recipients, consistent with essentialism. Respondents also endorsed essentialist effects even when denying that transplants would change a recipient's category membership (e.g., predicting that a recipient of a pig's heart would act more pig‐like but denying that the recipient would become a pig). This finding runs counter to predictions from the strongest version of the “minimalist” position (Strevens,2000), an alternative to essentialism. Finally, studies asking about a broader range of donor‐to‐recipient transfers indicated that I ndians essentialized more types of transfers than A mericans, but neither sample essentialized monetary transfer. This suggests that results from bodily transplant conditions reflect genuine essentialism rather than broader magical thinking.