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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jul 28, 2026

Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization

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Essentialist beliefs about social categories.

N Haslam¹, L Rothschild, D Ernst

¹New School for Social Research, New York, USA. haslam@newschool.edu

The British Journal of Social Psychology

|April 25, 2000

Summary

Beliefs about social categories reveal two key dimensions of essentialism: natural kinds and entitativity. Essentialism is not monolithic, and its association with prejudice varies across social categories.

Area of Science:

Social Psychology
Cognitive Science
Ontology

Background:

Essentialism, the belief in inherent essences, influences social categorization.
Previous research often views essentialism as a unitary construct linked to prejudice.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the dimensional structure of essentialist beliefs about social categories.
To examine the relationship between essentialism, natural kinds, entitativity, and evaluative status.

Main Methods:

Rated forty social categories on nine elements of essentialism.
Utilized factor analysis to identify dimensions of essentialism, specifically natural kinds and entitativity (reification).

Main Results:

Essentialism comprises two independent dimensions: natural kinds and entitativity.

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Entitativity was negatively associated with a category's evaluative status.

This negative association was stronger for categories perceived as natural kinds.

Conclusions:

Essentialism is not a monolithic belief system.
The relationship between essentialism and devaluation is nuanced and depends on category type and perceived essence.
Understanding the dimensions of essentialism offers insights into social categorization processes.