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Showing posts with label Essentialism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Essentialism. Show all posts

Friday, November 19, 2021

Biological Essentialism Correlates with (But Doesn’t Cause?) Intergroup Bias

Bailey, A., & Knobe, J. 
(2021, September 17).
https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/rx8jc

Abstract

People with biological essentialist beliefs about social groups also tend to endorse biased beliefs about individuals in those groups, including stereotypes, prejudices, and intensified emphasis on the group. These correlations could be due to biological essentialism causing bias, and some experimental studies support this causal direction. Given this prior work, we expected to find that biological essentialism would lead to increased bias compared to a control condition and set out to extend this prior work in a new direction (regarding “value-based” essentialism). But although the manipulation affected essentialist beliefs and essentialist beliefs were correlated with stereotyping (Studies 1, 2a, and 2b), prejudice (Studies 2a), and group emphasis (Study 3), there was no evidence that biological essentialism caused these outcomes. Given these findings, our initial research question became moot, and the present work focuses on reexamining the relationship between essentialism and bias. We discuss possible moderators, reverse causation, and third variables.


General Discussion

The present studies examined the relationship between biological essentialism and intergroup bias. As in prior work, we found that essentialist beliefs were correlated positively with stereotyping, including negative stereotyping, as well as group boundary intensification.  This positive relationship was found for essentialist thinking more generally (Studies 1, 2a, 2b, and 3) as well as specific beliefs in a biological essence (Studies 1, 2a, and 3). (New to this research, we also found similar positive correlations with beliefs in a value-based essence.) The internal meta-analysis for stereotyping confirmed a small but consistent positive relationship. Findings for prejudice were more mixed across studies consistent with more mixed findings in the prior literature even for correlational effects, but the internal meta-analysis indicated a small relationship between greater biological essentialism and less negative feelings toward the group(as in, e.g., Haslam & Levy, 2006, but see, Chen & Ratliff, 2018). 

Before conducting this research and based on the previous literature, we assumed that these correlational relationships would be due to essentialism causing intergroup bias. But although our experimental manipulations worked as designed to shift essentialist beliefs, there was no evidence that biological essentialism caused stereotyping, prejudice, or group boundary intensification.  The present studies thus suggest that a straightforward causal effect of essentialism on intergroup bias may be weaker or more complex than often described.

Sunday, March 14, 2021

The ”true me”—one or many?

Berent, I., & Platt, M. (2019, December 9). 
https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/tkur5

Abstract

Recent results suggest that people hold a notion of the true self, distinct from the self. Here, we seek to further elucidate the “true me”—whether it is good or bad, material or immaterial. Critically, we ask whether the true self is unitary. To address these questions, we invited participants to reason about John—a character who simultaneously exhibits both positive and negative moral behaviors. John’s character was gauged via two tests--a brain scan and a behavioral test, whose results invariably diverged (i.e., one test indicated that John’s moral core is positive and another negative). Participants assessed John’s true self along two questions: (a) Did John commit his acts (positive and negative) freely? and (b) What is John’s essence really? Responses to the two questions diverged. When asked to  evaluate John’s moral core explicitly (by reasoning about his free will), people invariably descried John’s true self as good. But when John’s moral core was assessed implicitly (by considering his essence), people sided with the outcomes of the brain test. These results demonstrate that people hold conflicting notions of the true self. We formally support this proposal by presenting a grammar of the true self, couched within Optimality Theory. We
show that the constraint ranking necessary to capture explicit and implicit view of the true self are distinct. Our intuitive belief in a true unitary “me” is thus illusory.

From the Conclusion

When we consider a person’s moral core explicitly (by evaluating which acts they commit freely), we consider them as having a single underlying moral valence (rather multiple competing attributes), and that moral core is decidedly good. Thus, our explicit notion of true moral self is good and unitary, a proposal that is supported by previous findings (e.g., De Freitas & Cikara, 2018; Molouki & Bartels, 2017; Newman et al., 2014b; Tobia, 2016).  But when we consider the person’s moral fiber implicitly, we evaluate their essence--a notion that is devoid of specific moral valence (good or bad), but is intimately linked to their material body. This material view of essence is in line with previous results, suggesting that children (Gelman, 2003; Gelman & Wellman, 1991) and infants (Setoh et al., 2013) believe that living things must have “insides”, and that their essence corresponds to a piece of matter (Springer & Keil, 1991) that is localized at the center of the body (Newman & Keil, 2008). Further support for this material notion of essence is presented by people’s tendency to conclude that psychological traits that are localized in the brain are more likely to be innate (Berent et al., 2019; Berent et al., 2019, September 10). The persistent link between John’s essence and the outcomes of the brain probe in also in line with this proposal. 

Friday, December 1, 2017

The Essence of the Individual: The Pervasive Belief in the True Self Is an Instance of Psychological Essentialism

Andrew G. Christy, Rebecca J. Schlegel, and Andrei Cimpian
Preprint

Abstract

Eight studies (N = 2,974) were conducted to test the hypothesis that the widespread folk belief in the true self is an instance of psychological essentialism. Results supported this hypothesis. Specifically, participants’ reasoning about the true self displayed the telltale features of essentialist reasoning (immutability, discreteness, consistency, informativeness, inherence, and biological basis; Studies 1–4); participants’ endorsement of true-self beliefs correlated with individual differences in other essentialist beliefs (Study 5); and experimental manipulations of essentialist thought in domains other than the self were found to “spill over” and affect the extent to which participants endorsed true-self beliefs (Studies 6–8). These findings advance theory on the origins and functions of true-self beliefs, revealing these beliefs to be a specific instance of a broader tendency to explain phenomena in the world in terms of underlying essences.

The preprint is here.

Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Evolution makes scientific sense. So why do many people reject it?

Nathalia Gjersoe
The Guardian
Originally published March 31, 2016

Evolution is poorly understood by students and, disturbingly, by many of their science teachers. Although it is part of the compulsory science curriculum in most schools in the UK and the USA, more than a third of people in both countries reject the theory of evolution outright or believe that it is guided by a supreme being.

It is critical that the voting public have a clear understanding of evolution. Adaptation by natural selection, the primary mechanism of evolution, underpins a raft of current social concerns such as antibiotic resistance, the impact of climate change and the relationship between genes and environment. So why, despite formal scientific education, does intelligent design remain so intuitively plausible and evolution so intuitively opaque? And what can we do about it?

Developmental psychologists have identified two cognitive biases in very young children that help to explain the popularity of intelligent design. The first is a belief that species are defined by an internal quality that cannot be changed (psychological essentialism). The second is that all things are designed for a purpose (promiscuous teleology). These biases interact with cultural beliefs such as religion but are just as prevalent in children raised in secular societies. Importantly, these beliefs become increasingly entrenched, making formal scientific instruction more and more difficult as children get older.

Thursday, December 25, 2014

Effects of biological explanations for mental disorders on clinicians’ empathy

By Matthew S. Lebowitz and Woo-kyoung Ahn
Effects of biological explanations for mental disorders on clinicians’ empathy
PNAS 2014 : 1414058111v1-201414058

Abstract

Mental disorders are increasingly understood in terms of biological mechanisms. We examined how such biological explanations of patients’ symptoms would affect mental health clinicians’ empathy—a crucial component of the relationship between treatment-providers and patients—as well as their clinical judgments and recommendations. In a series of studies, US clinicians read descriptions of potential patients whose symptoms were explained using either biological or psychosocial information. Biological explanations have been thought to make patients appear less accountable for their disorders, which could increase clinicians’ empathy. To the contrary, biological explanations evoked significantly less empathy. These results are consistent with other research and theory that has suggested that biological accounts of psychopathology can exacerbate perceptions of patients as abnormal, distinct from the rest of the population, meriting social exclusion, and even less than fully human. Although the ongoing shift toward biomedical conceptualizations has many benefits, our results reveal unintended negative consequences.

Significance

Mental disorders are increasingly understood biologically. We tested the effects of biological explanations among mental health clinicians, specifically examining their empathy toward patients. Conventional wisdom suggests that biological explanations reduce perceived blameworthiness against those with mental disorders, which could increase empathy. Yet, conceptualizing mental disorders biologically can cast patients as physiologically different from “normal” people and as governed by genetic or neurochemical abnormalities instead of their own human agency, which can engender negative social attitudes and dehumanization. This suggests that biological explanations might actually decrease empathy. Indeed, we find that biological explanations significantly reduce clinicians’ empathy. This is alarming because clinicians’ empathy is important for the therapeutic alliance between mental health providers and patients and significantly predicts positive clinical outcomes.

The entire article is here.

Thursday, December 18, 2014

Value Judgments and the True Self

By George E. Newman, Paul Bloom, & Joshua Knobe
Pers Soc Psychol Bull February 2014 vol. 40 no. 2 203-216

Abstract

The belief that individuals have a “true self” plays an important role in many areas of psychology as well as everyday life. The present studies demonstrate that people have a general tendency to conclude that the true self is fundamentally good—that is, that deep inside every individual, there is something motivating him or her to behave in ways that are virtuous. Study 1 finds that observers are more likely to see a person’s true self reflected in behaviors they deem to be morally good than in behaviors they deem to be bad. Study 2 replicates this effect and demonstrates observers’ own moral values influence what they judge to be another person’s true self. Finally, Study 3 finds that this normative view of the true self is independent of the particular type of mental state (beliefs vs. feelings) that is seen as responsible for an agent’s behavior.

The entire article is here.

Saturday, April 12, 2014

In Genes We Trust: How Our Essentialist Biases Distort How We Think About Genes

Posted by Peter B. Reiner
Neuroethics at the Core
Posted March 7, 2014

This video was recorded on October 23-25, 2013 during a Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies International Roundtable, "We Are Our Brains", led by Principal Investigator Dr. Peter B. Reiner (Department of Psychiatry, UBC and the National Core for Neuroethics).

To learn more about We Are Our Brains.