Journal
JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
Volume 42, Issue 2, Pages 228-235Publisher
ACADEMIC PRESS INC ELSEVIER SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2005.03.003
Keywords
essentialism; implicit theories; stereotyping
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Research on implicit person theories shows that people who believe that human attributes are immutable (entity theorists) are particularly prone to endorse social stereotypes and to explain them with reference to innate factors. We argue that entity theories belong to a broader set of beliefs that represent differences between people in terms of underlying essences. New measures of three essentialist beliefs (i.e., in the biological basis, discreteness, and informativeness of human attributes) were developed in a pilot study. In the main study, these beliefs were found to covary with entity theories, and to predict the endorsement and innate explanation of stereotypes. Essentialist beliefs predicted stereotype endorsement independently of popular stereotyping-related individual difference measures, and in a way that was not reducible to the effect of entity theories. We propose that research on implicit person theories can be placed within an encompassing framework of psychological essentialism. (c) 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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