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Published on: September 28, 2018
Psychological essentialism and nationalism as determinants of interethnic bias
Saori Tsukamoto1, Joe Enright, Minoru Karasawa
1Nagoya University, Graduate School of Environmental Studies, B4-1(780) Furo-cho, Chikusa, Nagoya 464-8601, Japan. tsukamoto.saori@h.mbox.nagoya-u.ac.jp
Abstract:
The present study examined whether individuals without strong national identity (i.e., low nationalism) would be susceptible to temporarily elicited essentialism to alter their mental representations of ethnic boundaries, and thus increase interethnic bias. To test these ideas we experimentally induced essentialist beliefs among Japanese subjects about the boundary between Japanese and Chinese ethnicities, while measuring the strength of nationalism as an individual variable. The results were generally consistent with predictions, suggesting that the activation of essentialist beliefs can strengthen interethnic biases among people without strong nationalism.
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