Developmental changes in the coherence of essentialist beliefs about psychological characteristics

Essentialism is the belief that certain characteristics (of individuals or categories) may be relatively stable, unchanging, likely to be present at birth, and biologically based. The current studies examined how different essentialist beliefs interrelate. For example, does thinking that a property is innate imply that the property cannot be changed? Four studies were conducted, examining how children (N = 195, grades 1-7; ages 7-13) and adults (N = 187) reason about familiar and novel social characteristics. By 3rd grade (9 years), children showed some coherence of essentialist beliefs. In contrast, younger children expected less interrelatedness among dimensions than older children or adults. These findings suggest that essentialist attributions at first consist of separate strands that children eventually link together into a more coherent understanding.