Psychological Essentialism at the Explicit and Implicit Levels: The Unique Status of Social Categories

Psychological essentialism refers to a naive theory concerning fundamental elements that bring a category into its existence. The present study examined the structure of this lay theory as well as its implicitness, with a special focus on social categories. In Study 1, Japanese college students rated a number of categories that were natural-kind, social, or human artifacts, in terms of different elements of essentialist beliefs. A factor analysis revealed that entitativity and naturalness are the common underlying dimensions across these category domains. We also identified some natural-kind and human artifact categories that can be used as two extreme referent points for the examination of naturalness perceived in a whole array of social categories. Study 2 assessed implicit and automatic judgments on naturalness using a go/no-go task, and compared them to explicit judgments. Unlike natural kinds and artifacts, social categories were essentialized to a greater extent at the implicit level. These results suggest a dual process of intuitive and deliberate cognition, particularly involving social categories, with implications concerning the bases of stereotypes and prejudices.