Perceiving groups as natural kinds with essences drives sweeping stereotype generalization

Evidence

Although most social groups (including racial groups) are, in reality, artifactual categories rather than natural kinds, people often perceive groups as natural kinds and therefore endow their members with some kind of essence (Rothbart & Taylor, 1992). Thus, historically, people have talked about the “Jewishness” of Jews and have applied the “single drop of blood” criterion for race; in these cases, ethnic group differences “are regarded as innate, indelible, and unchangeable” (Frederickson, 2002, p. 5). Once a group is perceived as a natural kind – as having some unalterable inner essence – then it affords greater confidence in drawing inferences (inductive potential) about its members. As a result, perceivers make sweeping generalizations (of the kind Allport stressed) about all group members, who are seen as being very similar to one another, especially on attributes related to the “essential” basis for category membership (see also Haslam, Rothschild, & Ernst, 2002; Yzerbyt, Rocher, & Schadron, 1997). — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 1388

Categorization

• XREF: Extends Allport’s inductive-potential mechanism from the earlier chapters into the essentialism literature — the trait-based inductive generalization Allport stressed is here given an essentialist trigger. — connects to: Humans infer unseen traits of new species from essentialized hierarchical categories. — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 267