People apply distinct essence and agency theories when perceiving group entitativity

Evidence

In particular, Brewer, Hong, and Li (2004) proposed that people hold different intuitive “theories” of entitativity which, they postulated, people hold and apply in perceiving groups. They distinguished between two such theories, which they called the essence and the agency theories of entitativity. These theories have different properties, diverging in their units of analysis, their assumptions about both intragroup consistency and intergroup similarity, and their expectations for group consistency and change. — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 227

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the essence vs. agency theories of entitativity, a key conceptual framework introduced here.