Illusory Essences: A Bias Holding Back Theorizing in Psychological Science

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Cognitive Science
• Neuroscience

Background:

• Psychological research heavily relies on verbal definitions and categorization.
• Concepts like intelligence and attention are often treated as having underlying essences.
• This essentialist approach can create an illusion of understanding without empirical grounding.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe the pervasive tendency in psychological science to assume essences explain phenomena.
• To synthesize research from cognitive, clinical, and biological psychology, and neuroscience.
• To highlight methods and strategies for avoiding essentialist pitfalls in theory development.

Main Methods:

• Synthesis of diverse research lines across psychology and neuroscience.
• Analysis of how category labels and assumed essences impact theoretical progress.
• Identification of promising methods that bypass essentialist assumptions.

Main Results:

• A pervasive tendency exists in psychological science to assume essences for complex phenomena.
• Category labels can mask contingent relationships and obscure the need for mechanistic explanations.
• Essentialism can create an illusion of theoretical progress without sufficient evidence.

Conclusions:

• Essentialist intuitions can impede scientific advancement in psychology.
• Developing theories requires avoiding the assumption of definable essences.
• Strategies are proposed to identify and circumvent essentialism in psychological research.