Psychological essentialism and stereotype endorsement

Abstract

Research on implicit person theories shows that people who believe that human attributes are immutable ("entity theorists") are particularly prone to endorse social stereotypes and to explain them with reference to innate factors. We argue that entity theories belong to a broader set of beliefs that represent differences between people in terms of underlying essences. New measures of three essentialist beliefs (i.e., in the biological basis, discreteness, and informativeness of human attributes) were developed in a pilot study. In the main study, these beliefs were found to covary with entity theories, and to predict the endorsement and innate explanation of stereotypes. Essentialist beliefs..