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Essentialist beliefs about social categories
Author(s) -
Haslam Nick,
Rothschild Louis,
Ernst Donald
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
british journal of social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.855
H-Index - 98
eISSN - 2044-8309
pISSN - 0144-6665
DOI - 10.1348/014466600164363
Subject(s) - essentialism , categorization , reification (marxism) , social category , psychology , social psychology , prejudice (legal term) , unitary state , natural (archaeology) , social identity theory , epistemology , social group , philosophy , archaeology , politics , political science , law , history
This study examines beliefs about the ontological status of social categories, asking whether their members are understood to share fixed, inhering essences or natures. Forty social categories were rated on nine elements of essentialism. These elements formed two independent dimensions, representing the degrees to which categories are understood as natural kinds and as coherent entities with inhering cores (‘entitativity’ or reification), respectively. Reification was negatively associated with categories evaluative status, especially among those categories understood to be natural kinds. Essentialism is not a unitary syndrome of social beliefs, and is not monolithically associated with devaluation and prejudice, but it illuminates several aspects of social categorization.