The idea that an intuitive heuristic underpins essentialist thinking is potentially attractive for social and personality psychologists. I am personally gratified by the focus on “inherence,” having identified it as a key element of essentialist thinking in my early work on the topic (e.g., Haslam et al. Reference Haslam, Rothschild and Ernst2000; Reference Haslam, Rothschild and Ernst2002). Cimpian & Salomon's (C&S's) analysis of the heuristic's component processes helps to define the cognitive foundations of essentialist thinking. This process account has several implications for the study of psychological essentialism in the social domain.
C&S's process account can shed some light on individual differences in essentialist thinking, a question of obvious importance to the study of prejudice, but one that has been insufficiently theorized. The heuristic is said to involve a process of intuitive “storytelling” that explains observed patterns with reference to their inherent properties. This explanatory focus on indwelling, constitutive features is presented as a basis or precursor for psychological essentialism. Individual difference variables that influence the complexity and thoroughness of the storytelling process should therefore contribute to variations in essentialist thinking.
The target article details how cognitive abilities and styles might in theory influence the output of the inherence heuristic. It also shows empirically that the heuristic is associated with individual differences in essentialist thinking and with several measures of cognitive ability and style. These findings complement and help to explain an emerging body of work showing that cognitive styles and epistemic needs are associated with essentialist thinking in the social domain. For example, Roets and Van Hiel (Reference Roets and Van Hiel2011) have demonstrated that people high in need for closure tend to hold more essentialist beliefs, particularly in the inherent basis of racial categories, and that this relationship is both causal and consequential. Manipulating the need influences the endorsement of essentialist beliefs, and variations in the need are associated with racial prejudice through their mutual association with essentialist thinking. Relatedly, Tadmor et al. (Reference Tadmor, Chao, Hong and Polzer2013) show that racial essentialism is negatively associated with creativity, an association that also appears to be causal rather than merely incidental.
Findings such as these add credence to the idea that essentialist thinking is linked to basic cognitive processes that generate several species of closed-mindedness. The inherence heuristic account specifies the nature of those processes in more detail than does prior work in social psychology. The target article's claim that cognitive ability should also predict differential reliance on the heuristic also opens an intriguing window on findings that general intelligence is negatively associated with prejudice (Hodson & Busseri Reference Hodson and Busseri2012), an association that might be partially explained by essentialist thinking or use of the heuristic. Whether or not this is true, the heuristic enables a more cognitively sophisticated analysis of the essentialism–prejudice relationship.
The target article's account of the heuristic underpinnings of essentialist thinking also enables a clear understanding of the variability of psychological essentialism in the social domain. Essentialist beliefs employ diverse explanatory idioms and can be employed differently across contexts. This variability is entirely to be expected if essentialist thinking is conceptualized as a process of explanatory storytelling that works on often ill-formed understandings of inherent features. Such a sense-making process will rely on whatever explanatory resources are contextually or culturally salient, whether these be biological (e.g., blood, genes, or germs), spiritual (e.g., souls), or something else.
This view stands in stark contrast to the position that essentialist thinking involves the top-down application of a natural kind or folk-biological ontology. Similarly, if essentialist thinking, grounded in the inherence heuristic, amounts to an attempted solution to an explanatory puzzle, then we should not be surprised to see it employed flexibly, depending on the context of that puzzle. Social psychological research has made it clear that people express and hold essentialist beliefs to markedly different degrees to support particular social goals and interests. People may endorse gender essentialism only when it advantages their gender (Morton et al. Reference Morton, Postmes, Haslam and Hornsey2009), vacillate between essentialist and nonessentialist understandings of an immigrant group's ethnicity depending on rhetorical purpose (Verkuyten Reference Verkuyten2003), and overcome their usual liberal reluctance to essentialize by seeing sexual orientation as biologically determined and fixed (Haslam & Levy Reference Haslam and Levy2006). Essentialist beliefs do not impose rigid, once-and-for-all ontological statuses on particular social categories, but can be applied malleably depending on the explanatory requirements of the context, as the inherence heuristic account would suggest.
That account may also have implications for the conceptual boundaries of psychological essentialism. The concept has been employed with varying degrees of stringency within social psychology, sometimes referring strictly to a species-like natural kind view of a social group (i.e., biological essence, discrete category boundary, immutable category membership) and sometimes more loosely to any imputation of underlying commonalities held by group members. Although the inherence heuristic is only one proposed contributor to psychological essentialism, as an important foundation it might help to delimit how far that concept can stretch. In particular, it would seem to imply that essentialism thinking must invoke inherent properties as causes. This rather minimal requirement is arguably not met by a recent argument for “belief in social determinism” as a component of essentialism (Rangel & Keller Reference Rangel and Keller2011), such a belief holding that people's character is shaped by extrinsic factors such as upbringing and social background. If we take inherent causal properties to be essential for essentialism, then this belief – which involves seeing a social group more as an artifact than as a natural kind – does not seem to qualify.
The inherence heuristic is a useful and potentially generative idea that awaits further study. Its definition of inherent features seems to me overinclusive, encompassing features that are superficial and secondary (e.g., the smell of citrus). The argument that inherent properties will also be seen as stable and enduring is challenged by some of my own work (e.g., Haslam et al. Reference Haslam, Rothschild and Ernst2000; Reference Haslam, Rothschild and Ernst2002), which finds that beliefs in the inherence and immutability of social categories are unrelated. Nevertheless, the heuristic deserves serious consideration by psychologists who study essentialist thinking in the social domain.
The idea that an intuitive heuristic underpins essentialist thinking is potentially attractive for social and personality psychologists. I am personally gratified by the focus on “inherence,” having identified it as a key element of essentialist thinking in my early work on the topic (e.g., Haslam et al. Reference Haslam, Rothschild and Ernst2000; Reference Haslam, Rothschild and Ernst2002). Cimpian & Salomon's (C&S's) analysis of the heuristic's component processes helps to define the cognitive foundations of essentialist thinking. This process account has several implications for the study of psychological essentialism in the social domain.
C&S's process account can shed some light on individual differences in essentialist thinking, a question of obvious importance to the study of prejudice, but one that has been insufficiently theorized. The heuristic is said to involve a process of intuitive “storytelling” that explains observed patterns with reference to their inherent properties. This explanatory focus on indwelling, constitutive features is presented as a basis or precursor for psychological essentialism. Individual difference variables that influence the complexity and thoroughness of the storytelling process should therefore contribute to variations in essentialist thinking.
The target article details how cognitive abilities and styles might in theory influence the output of the inherence heuristic. It also shows empirically that the heuristic is associated with individual differences in essentialist thinking and with several measures of cognitive ability and style. These findings complement and help to explain an emerging body of work showing that cognitive styles and epistemic needs are associated with essentialist thinking in the social domain. For example, Roets and Van Hiel (Reference Roets and Van Hiel2011) have demonstrated that people high in need for closure tend to hold more essentialist beliefs, particularly in the inherent basis of racial categories, and that this relationship is both causal and consequential. Manipulating the need influences the endorsement of essentialist beliefs, and variations in the need are associated with racial prejudice through their mutual association with essentialist thinking. Relatedly, Tadmor et al. (Reference Tadmor, Chao, Hong and Polzer2013) show that racial essentialism is negatively associated with creativity, an association that also appears to be causal rather than merely incidental.
Findings such as these add credence to the idea that essentialist thinking is linked to basic cognitive processes that generate several species of closed-mindedness. The inherence heuristic account specifies the nature of those processes in more detail than does prior work in social psychology. The target article's claim that cognitive ability should also predict differential reliance on the heuristic also opens an intriguing window on findings that general intelligence is negatively associated with prejudice (Hodson & Busseri Reference Hodson and Busseri2012), an association that might be partially explained by essentialist thinking or use of the heuristic. Whether or not this is true, the heuristic enables a more cognitively sophisticated analysis of the essentialism–prejudice relationship.
The target article's account of the heuristic underpinnings of essentialist thinking also enables a clear understanding of the variability of psychological essentialism in the social domain. Essentialist beliefs employ diverse explanatory idioms and can be employed differently across contexts. This variability is entirely to be expected if essentialist thinking is conceptualized as a process of explanatory storytelling that works on often ill-formed understandings of inherent features. Such a sense-making process will rely on whatever explanatory resources are contextually or culturally salient, whether these be biological (e.g., blood, genes, or germs), spiritual (e.g., souls), or something else.
This view stands in stark contrast to the position that essentialist thinking involves the top-down application of a natural kind or folk-biological ontology. Similarly, if essentialist thinking, grounded in the inherence heuristic, amounts to an attempted solution to an explanatory puzzle, then we should not be surprised to see it employed flexibly, depending on the context of that puzzle. Social psychological research has made it clear that people express and hold essentialist beliefs to markedly different degrees to support particular social goals and interests. People may endorse gender essentialism only when it advantages their gender (Morton et al. Reference Morton, Postmes, Haslam and Hornsey2009), vacillate between essentialist and nonessentialist understandings of an immigrant group's ethnicity depending on rhetorical purpose (Verkuyten Reference Verkuyten2003), and overcome their usual liberal reluctance to essentialize by seeing sexual orientation as biologically determined and fixed (Haslam & Levy Reference Haslam and Levy2006). Essentialist beliefs do not impose rigid, once-and-for-all ontological statuses on particular social categories, but can be applied malleably depending on the explanatory requirements of the context, as the inherence heuristic account would suggest.
That account may also have implications for the conceptual boundaries of psychological essentialism. The concept has been employed with varying degrees of stringency within social psychology, sometimes referring strictly to a species-like natural kind view of a social group (i.e., biological essence, discrete category boundary, immutable category membership) and sometimes more loosely to any imputation of underlying commonalities held by group members. Although the inherence heuristic is only one proposed contributor to psychological essentialism, as an important foundation it might help to delimit how far that concept can stretch. In particular, it would seem to imply that essentialism thinking must invoke inherent properties as causes. This rather minimal requirement is arguably not met by a recent argument for “belief in social determinism” as a component of essentialism (Rangel & Keller Reference Rangel and Keller2011), such a belief holding that people's character is shaped by extrinsic factors such as upbringing and social background. If we take inherent causal properties to be essential for essentialism, then this belief – which involves seeing a social group more as an artifact than as a natural kind – does not seem to qualify.
The inherence heuristic is a useful and potentially generative idea that awaits further study. Its definition of inherent features seems to me overinclusive, encompassing features that are superficial and secondary (e.g., the smell of citrus). The argument that inherent properties will also be seen as stable and enduring is challenged by some of my own work (e.g., Haslam et al. Reference Haslam, Rothschild and Ernst2000; Reference Haslam, Rothschild and Ernst2002), which finds that beliefs in the inherence and immutability of social categories are unrelated. Nevertheless, the heuristic deserves serious consideration by psychologists who study essentialist thinking in the social domain.