Stereotype rationalizations are tautologically essentialist and self-contradictory yet retained

Evidence

This work builds on the notion that people form social categories on the basis of similarity and related cues but also go further to develop intuitive theories and explanations about how and why members of a social category belong together. These explanations often take tautological, essentialistic forms. Anti-Semitism, for example, invariably “finds its rationalization in some presumed aspect of ‘Jewish essence’” (Allport, 1954/1979, p. 195). The same perceiver may criticize Jews (or Asians, or whomever) at one convenient moment for being inherently “clannish” and at other times for intrusively forcing themselves upon others. The categorization function explains why stereotypes are undifferentiated and overgeneralized; the justification function explains why they are so often illogical and contrary to fact. — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 1371

Categorization

• QUESTION: The claim that the same perceiver holds contradictory stereotype traits — clannish yet intrusive — is a striking cognitive paradox worth exploring in the essentialism literature.
• XREF: connects to: Skeptical dialectic shows equal necessity for contradictory determinations, yielding nullity — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 1122; Humans rationalize arbitrary customs as rational or biological after settling on them — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 117; the MOC “The Wound of the Label: When Knowing Someone Becomes a Way of Erasing Them”