Essentialist beliefs come in two distinct, measurable classes linked to prejudice

Evidence

Mahalingam (2003) examined essentialism in the context of the caste system in India and found that Brahmins endorsed a selective form of essentialism that justified their group’s position of privilege in the system. Research by Haslam, Rothschild, and Ernst (2002) indicated that American participants endorsed (to varying degrees) two general classes of essentialist beliefs, namely natural kind beliefs (naturalness, discreteness, immutability, historical stability, and necessary features) and entitativity beliefs (uniformity, informativeness, and inherence), and that at least some of these beliefs were correlated with anti-Black and antigay prejudice. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 1413

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the natural-kind vs entitativity distinction in essentialist belief, a two-class framework worth keeping.
• XREF: The Brahmin selective essentialism parallels the reader’s knowledge of apologetics and legitimizing myths in stratified societies.