Commentary/Cimpian & Salomon: The inherence heuristic found that although White American children aged 7-11 years showed a robust implicit preference for Whites over Blacks, Black American cliildren on average showed a lack of implicit bias (appearing, on average, to prefer neither Blacks nor Whites; Newheiser & Olson 2012) - directly paralleling prior find ings with American adults (e.g., Nosek et al. 2002). This pattern is remarkable, albeit unfortunate, insofar as it suggests that minori ty-group children as young as age 7 years are influenced by the low status that society attributes to their racial in-group. Furthermore, we have conceptually replicated and extended this finding cross-culturally: Turning to South Africa, a society in which race-based differentials in status and advantage are extremely pronounced-m uch more so than in the United S tates-w e found that 6- to 11-year-old Black and Coloured (i.e., multiracial) South African children implicitly favored Whites, the higheststatus racial group in their society, over their own in-groups (Newheiser et al. 2014). Both Black and Coloured children also implicitly preferred Coloureds, an intermediate-status group, over Blacks, representing an out-group preference among Black South African children (Dunham et al. 2014). Thus, whereas race-based status differentials canceled out implicit in-group pref erence among Black American children, they resulted in a full reversal to out-group-favoring implicit biases among South African minority-group children. Our findings align with the inherence heuristic account insofar as they demonstrate that system-justifying cognition that tracks the degree of group-based status differences can indeed be ob served among children. In terms of C&S’s account, our findings might be interpreted as suggesting that as children observe a pattern indicating that members of certain racial/ethnic groups appear to be more advantaged than members of other groups, cliildren come to infer that this pattern occurs because members of advantaged racial/ethnic groups possess characteris tics that make them inherently “better” - that is, that certain racial/ethnic groups should have higher status by virtue of their inherent features (see also Kay et al. 2009). Whereas our data are potentially consistent with C&S’s general argument, we note that the specifics of the inherence heuristic account remain in need of direct evidence. In particular, we ques tion whether cliildren are in fact making inferences regarding the inherent features of racial/ethnic groups that differ in status. An alternative, and simpler, account relies on mere cognitive associa tions that may emerge as children observe the world around them. That is, as children encounter members of different racial/ethnic groups, in their everyday lives or via the media, they likely notice the covariation between race/ethnicity and status (e.g., in terms of wealth; Olson et al. 2012). Forming such associations between racial groups and status might directly result in the lack of implicit race bias we observed among Black American children, and in the implicit out-group biases we observed among South African mi nority-group children; an inference regarding inherent features may not be necessary at all. To conclude, the inherence heuristic account argues that people tend to interpret patterns they observe in terms of inher ent features, and that this tendency enables system-justifying cog nition (among other psychological phenomena). However, we propose that merely observing relationships between group mem bership and a valenced characteristic (e.g., status) will result in preferences and beliefs that are consistent with those relation ships. For example, observing that Group A is low in status may lead one to disfavor Group A simply because status is a highly valued characteristic; an additional inference that something in herent about Group A makes it low in status is not necessary. Moreover, even if one does eventually make such an inference about inherent features, this inference is plausibly a consequence rather than a cause of system-justifying beliefs and preferences perhaps serving to justify such beliefs and preferences. It thus seems neither necessary nor sufficient to posit the inherence heu ristic as a precursor to system-justifying or hierarchy-attenuating beliefs and preferences. We note that developmental research is
in a unique position to help pit these alternative accounts against each other by providing evidence of the sequence in which these, and other related, processes first emerge.
Owning up to the role of historical information doi:10.1017/S0140525X13003828 Nicholaus S. Noles and Judith H. Danovitch Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY 40292. n .n o le s @ lo u is v ille .e d u
j.d a n o v itc h @ lo u is v ille .e d u
h ttp ://lo u is v ille .e d u /p s y c h o lo g y /n o le s h ttp ://lo u is v ille .e d u /p s y c h o lo g y /d a n o v itc h
Abstract: Although the inherence heuristic is a versatile cognitive process that addresses a wide range of psychological phenomena, we propose that ownership information represents an important test case for evaluating both the boundaries of Cimpian & Salomon's (C&S's) model (e.g., is the inherence heuristic meaningfully limited to only inherent factors?) and its effectiveness as a mechanism for explaining psychological essentialism.
Cimpian & Salomon (C&S) present the inherence heuristic as a surprisingly simple and intuitive overarching cognitive process that accounts for a broad array of disparate research findings. G&S describe this process as addressing any feature that “can be said to characterize how an entity is constituted” (sect. 2.1.1, para. 1), and they define these features as salient, stable, accessi ble, intrinsic, internal, and nonobvious. Notably, the inherence heuristic does not address extrinsic factors, including historical in formation, and the justification for the exclusion of these factors is that they are not very salient or accessible. G&S use historical events and social conventions as two primary examples of extrinsic factors that may be reasonably excluded from consideration. However, we propose that the concept of ownership represents an extrinsic factor that poses two critical challenges to the present formulation of the inherence heuristic. The first challenge is that historical information plays a critical role in identifying and tracking property (Gelman et al. 2012). Ownership is abstract and nonobvious, like inherent features of entities, but, unlike historical events and social conventions, own ership is highly accessible and salient, even to very young children (Fasig 2000; Hay 2006; Levine 1983; Boss et al. 1990; Saylor et al. 2010). Whereas it may be reasonable to conclude that other ex trinsic factors fail to be activated by the mental shotgun, owner ship information has precisely the characteristics that should cause it to loom large in any narrative constructed by the storytell ing component of the process. There are also thematic similarities between the output of intuitions about ownership and the expla nations generated by the inherence heuristic. For instance, the output of both processes appears to be effortless despite resulting from a great deal of rapid, implicit cognitive processing. The second challenge that ownership presents with respect to the inherence heuristic is that it provokes individuals to perceive the in herent, essencelike qualities of individuals in objects. At the most basic level, giving an individual a piece of property enhances that person’s perception of its value (Beggan 1992; Gawronski et al. 2007; Kahneman et al. 1990; Thaler 1980). In addition, the knowl edge that an object has been in contact with a specific individual or special set of circumstances often results in intuitions that the object itself is contaminated or imbued with the essence of these in dividuals and events (Rozin & Nemeroff 1990). In this way, art may be appreciated because of its special, historical connection to an artist (Bullot & Rebar 2013; Gelman et al. 2013), and learning that a set of old, used golf clubs once belonged to JFK might dramatically inflate an individual’s attraction to and valuation of the clubs, a re sponse that can not be explained away completely by simple associ ations or market demands (Newman etal. 2011). In this way, objects with no special status are granted authenticity, a nonobvious BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES (2014) 37:5
497
Commentary /C im pian & Salomon: T h e in h eren ce heuristic historical property that makes certain objects special. Critically, chil dren as young as age 4 reason about authentic objects in an essentialist manner (Frazier & Gelman 2009; Gelman et al. 2014). Because tlie essencehke effects of ownership appear early and persist into adulthood, it is unlikely that they are some later by-product of psy chological essentialism. Thus, at least some element of historical in formation must be accounted for by any comprehensive explanation of psychological essentialism. Historical information plays an important role in considerations of ownership and authenticity, a role that highlights several gray areas with respect to the inherence heuristic. First, is the separa tion between intrinsic and extrinsic information detailed by C&S meaningful? There are at least two effects of this dichotomy on the model: (1) a separation between internal features (e.g., DNA, insides, essences) and external features (e.g., conventions, surface details), and (2) a division between features that are salient and accessible and those that are not. These two elements travel together in the examples presented by C&S, but ownership is a case where the two might be split apart, unless one conceptu alizes ownership in a very specific way (i.e., as an intrinsic feature that is historically, and therefore externally, defined - but whedier this is possible is an empirical question). Second, can historical information play a role in the output of the inherence heuristic? Historical information plays a critical role in de fining property (Gelman et al. 2012) and authentic objects (Frazier & Gelman 2009). Ownership information is accessible and salient in exactly the way that other kinds of historical information, such as social conventions and historical events, are not. In its current formulation, the inherence heuristic states that the mental shotgun selects inherent features because they are salient and accessible, but there is no requirement that they be internal or intrinsic. Al though it may be true drat inherent features are overrepresented in human explanation, perhaps because diey are salient and accessi ble, does the model need to be limited to inherent features? Finally, can die inherence heuristic effectively serve as die foun dation for psychological essentialism if it accounts only for essentialist dunking within a subset of domains? The inherence heuristic is a process that is proposed to explain broad patterns, and the relation ship between individuals and property is consistent and systemic. More specifically, people treat property as though it is imbued with the essence of current and prior owners. Historical information is central to concepts of ownership, and historical path may be an im portant element of essentialism, especially with respect to artifacts (see Frazier & Gelman 2009). However, in its current formulation, the inherence heuristic does not account for authenticity and other effects of ownership. Thus, the inherence heuristic appears to be well situated to address how we think about the intrinsic prop erties that underlie many human intuitions, but if this process is truly die foundation for psychological essentialism, then it needs to address historical information in some contexts.
The social aetiology of essentialist beliefs doi:10.1017/S0140525X1300383X Cliodhna O’Connor and Helene Joffe Division of Psychology & Language Sciences, University College London, London WC1H 0AP, United Kingdom. o c o n n o r .c @ u c l.a c .u k
h .jo ffe @ u c l.a c .u k
h t tp s ://ir is .u c l.a c .u k /ir is /b ro w s e /p ro file 7 u p iiC O C O N 8 0 h ttp ://w w w .u c l.a c .u k /p s y c h la n g s c i/re s e a r c h /C P B /p e o p le /c p b -s ta ff/ h jo ffe
Abstract: This com m entary highlights the im portance o f attending to the sociocultural contexts th at foster essentialist ideas. It contends that Cim pian & Salom on’s (C&S’s) m odel undervalues the extent to which the developm ent o f essentialist beliefs is contingent on social experience. T h e result is a restriction o f th e m odel’s applicability to realworld instances o f essentialism -fuelled prejudice and discrimination.
498
BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES (2014) 37:5
Psychological essentialism is a pervasive pattern of thinking that has been implicated in a host of unpleasant societal processes. As such, die endeavour of Cimpian & Salomon (C&S) to elucidate the roots of this psychological tendency is an important undertak ing. However, we argue diat die model diey have developed sustains one clear void: Namely, it underplays the influence of social factors on the development of essentialist beliefs, particular ly when those beliefs pertain to social groups. C&S contend that the origins of psychological essentialism lie in the “inherence heuristic,” which they present as a product of basic, potentially innate properties of the human cognitive system. Within their model of the development of essentialism, social factors are relegated to a subsidiary role. The basic tendency to make essentialist assumptions is cognitively prescribed, and social experience simply furnishes die surface content that allows these essentialist principles to be developed into culturally sensible narratives. However, diis jars widi the extensive body of theoretical and empirical literature that suggests that the process, as well as the content, of diought is socio-culturally shaped (Fiske et al. 1998). As children mature, diey are socialised into a commu nity o f minds from whom diey learn die appropriate ways of representing the world around them. This premise opens the pos sibility that patterns of essentialist thinking may be acquired, or at least formatively moulded, as a result of people’s encounters with the social world. Indeed, research shows that the propensity to engage in essentialist thought (as well as the precise content of essentialist ideas) varies systematically across cultural groups, including those differentiated by religion (Bimbaum et al. 2010; Diesendruck & Haber 2009), nationality (Malialingam & Rodriguez 2003), social status (Malialingam & Rodriguez 2006), political conservatism (Rhodes & Gelman 2009), and race (Jayaratne et al. 2009). This suggests that social experience can affect the very impulse to think in essentialist terms, rather than merely supplying the narratives that are tacked onto the funda mental, cognitively given precepts. C&S acknowledge the proposition that essentialist thinking is a product of socialisation, but dismiss this hypothesis as implausible. The sole empirical grounds provided for diis position relates to die failure of research to detect sufficient evidence of overt transmis sion of essentialism within parent-child conversations. Verbalised parent-child interaction is, however, an extremely narrow proxy for the whole spectrum of social influences on individual cogni tion. Engagement with die social world occurs through many channels - through institutions such as die mass media, education, commercial markets, and politics, as well as immediate verbal and non-verbal interpersonal interactions. All such means of commu nication are viable vectors of essentialist ideas. As an example of one such channel of social influence, research has suggested that the popular diffusion of scientific knowledge can propagate essentialist representations of particular social groups (Dar-Nimrod & Heine 2011). Recent research on media coverage of neuroscience shows that a key way in which neurosci ence is communicated to the public is via emphasising that differ ences between social groups are biologically rooted (O’Connor et al. 2012). This neuro-essentialism of social categories is exemplified by the ubiquitous trope of “the [adjective] brain” (e.g., “the male brain,” “the gay brain,” “the criminal brain”), which expressly condenses the essence of a given category into the notion of a distinctive brain type that is universally shared by all category members. The proliferation of such messages within the public sphere may trigger essentialist thinking in those who encounter them. Experimental research has shown that exposing people to information about the purported biogenetic foundations of, for example, gender (Brescoll & LaFrance 2004; Coleman & Hong 2008) or race (Keller 2005; No et al. 2008; Williams & Eberhardt 2008) exacerbates essentialist beliefs and corresponding processes of stereotyping and discrim ination. Though C&S acknowledge that biological information can be recruited into the “stories” that elaborate inherencebased assumptions, they do not consider whether exposure to
Copyright of Behavioral & Brain Sciences is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.
in a unique position to help pit these alternative accounts against each other by providing evidence of the sequence in which these, and other related, processes first emerge.
Owning up to the role of historical information doi:10.1017/S0140525X13003828 Nicholaus S. Noles and Judith H. Danovitch Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY 40292. n .n o le s @ lo u is v ille .e d u
j.d a n o v itc h @ lo u is v ille .e d u
h ttp ://lo u is v ille .e d u /p s y c h o lo g y /n o le s h ttp ://lo u is v ille .e d u /p s y c h o lo g y /d a n o v itc h
Abstract: Although the inherence heuristic is a versatile cognitive process that addresses a wide range of psychological phenomena, we propose that ownership information represents an important test case for evaluating both the boundaries of Cimpian & Salomon's (C&S's) model (e.g., is the inherence heuristic meaningfully limited to only inherent factors?) and its effectiveness as a mechanism for explaining psychological essentialism.
Cimpian & Salomon (C&S) present the inherence heuristic as a surprisingly simple and intuitive overarching cognitive process that accounts for a broad array of disparate research findings. G&S describe this process as addressing any feature that “can be said to characterize how an entity is constituted” (sect. 2.1.1, para. 1), and they define these features as salient, stable, accessi ble, intrinsic, internal, and nonobvious. Notably, the inherence heuristic does not address extrinsic factors, including historical in formation, and the justification for the exclusion of these factors is that they are not very salient or accessible. G&S use historical events and social conventions as two primary examples of extrinsic factors that may be reasonably excluded from consideration. However, we propose that the concept of ownership represents an extrinsic factor that poses two critical challenges to the present formulation of the inherence heuristic. The first challenge is that historical information plays a critical role in identifying and tracking property (Gelman et al. 2012). Ownership is abstract and nonobvious, like inherent features of entities, but, unlike historical events and social conventions, own ership is highly accessible and salient, even to very young children (Fasig 2000; Hay 2006; Levine 1983; Boss et al. 1990; Saylor et al. 2010). Whereas it may be reasonable to conclude that other ex trinsic factors fail to be activated by the mental shotgun, owner ship information has precisely the characteristics that should cause it to loom large in any narrative constructed by the storytell ing component of the process. There are also thematic similarities between the output of intuitions about ownership and the expla nations generated by the inherence heuristic. For instance, the output of both processes appears to be effortless despite resulting from a great deal of rapid, implicit cognitive processing. The second challenge that ownership presents with respect to the inherence heuristic is that it provokes individuals to perceive the in herent, essencelike qualities of individuals in objects. At the most basic level, giving an individual a piece of property enhances that person’s perception of its value (Beggan 1992; Gawronski et al. 2007; Kahneman et al. 1990; Thaler 1980). In addition, the knowl edge that an object has been in contact with a specific individual or special set of circumstances often results in intuitions that the object itself is contaminated or imbued with the essence of these in dividuals and events (Rozin & Nemeroff 1990). In this way, art may be appreciated because of its special, historical connection to an artist (Bullot & Rebar 2013; Gelman et al. 2013), and learning that a set of old, used golf clubs once belonged to JFK might dramatically inflate an individual’s attraction to and valuation of the clubs, a re sponse that can not be explained away completely by simple associ ations or market demands (Newman etal. 2011). In this way, objects with no special status are granted authenticity, a nonobvious BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES (2014) 37:5
497
Commentary /C im pian & Salomon: T h e in h eren ce heuristic historical property that makes certain objects special. Critically, chil dren as young as age 4 reason about authentic objects in an essentialist manner (Frazier & Gelman 2009; Gelman et al. 2014). Because tlie essencehke effects of ownership appear early and persist into adulthood, it is unlikely that they are some later by-product of psy chological essentialism. Thus, at least some element of historical in formation must be accounted for by any comprehensive explanation of psychological essentialism. Historical information plays an important role in considerations of ownership and authenticity, a role that highlights several gray areas with respect to the inherence heuristic. First, is the separa tion between intrinsic and extrinsic information detailed by C&S meaningful? There are at least two effects of this dichotomy on the model: (1) a separation between internal features (e.g., DNA, insides, essences) and external features (e.g., conventions, surface details), and (2) a division between features that are salient and accessible and those that are not. These two elements travel together in the examples presented by C&S, but ownership is a case where the two might be split apart, unless one conceptu alizes ownership in a very specific way (i.e., as an intrinsic feature that is historically, and therefore externally, defined - but whedier this is possible is an empirical question). Second, can historical information play a role in the output of the inherence heuristic? Historical information plays a critical role in de fining property (Gelman et al. 2012) and authentic objects (Frazier & Gelman 2009). Ownership information is accessible and salient in exactly the way that other kinds of historical information, such as social conventions and historical events, are not. In its current formulation, the inherence heuristic states that the mental shotgun selects inherent features because they are salient and accessible, but there is no requirement that they be internal or intrinsic. Al though it may be true drat inherent features are overrepresented in human explanation, perhaps because diey are salient and accessi ble, does the model need to be limited to inherent features? Finally, can die inherence heuristic effectively serve as die foun dation for psychological essentialism if it accounts only for essentialist dunking within a subset of domains? The inherence heuristic is a process that is proposed to explain broad patterns, and the relation ship between individuals and property is consistent and systemic. More specifically, people treat property as though it is imbued with the essence of current and prior owners. Historical information is central to concepts of ownership, and historical path may be an im portant element of essentialism, especially with respect to artifacts (see Frazier & Gelman 2009). However, in its current formulation, the inherence heuristic does not account for authenticity and other effects of ownership. Thus, the inherence heuristic appears to be well situated to address how we think about the intrinsic prop erties that underlie many human intuitions, but if this process is truly die foundation for psychological essentialism, then it needs to address historical information in some contexts.
The social aetiology of essentialist beliefs doi:10.1017/S0140525X1300383X Cliodhna O’Connor and Helene Joffe Division of Psychology & Language Sciences, University College London, London WC1H 0AP, United Kingdom. o c o n n o r .c @ u c l.a c .u k
h .jo ffe @ u c l.a c .u k
h t tp s ://ir is .u c l.a c .u k /ir is /b ro w s e /p ro file 7 u p iiC O C O N 8 0 h ttp ://w w w .u c l.a c .u k /p s y c h la n g s c i/re s e a r c h /C P B /p e o p le /c p b -s ta ff/ h jo ffe
Abstract: This com m entary highlights the im portance o f attending to the sociocultural contexts th at foster essentialist ideas. It contends that Cim pian & Salom on’s (C&S’s) m odel undervalues the extent to which the developm ent o f essentialist beliefs is contingent on social experience. T h e result is a restriction o f th e m odel’s applicability to realworld instances o f essentialism -fuelled prejudice and discrimination.
498
BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES (2014) 37:5
Psychological essentialism is a pervasive pattern of thinking that has been implicated in a host of unpleasant societal processes. As such, die endeavour of Cimpian & Salomon (C&S) to elucidate the roots of this psychological tendency is an important undertak ing. However, we argue diat die model diey have developed sustains one clear void: Namely, it underplays the influence of social factors on the development of essentialist beliefs, particular ly when those beliefs pertain to social groups. C&S contend that the origins of psychological essentialism lie in the “inherence heuristic,” which they present as a product of basic, potentially innate properties of the human cognitive system. Within their model of the development of essentialism, social factors are relegated to a subsidiary role. The basic tendency to make essentialist assumptions is cognitively prescribed, and social experience simply furnishes die surface content that allows these essentialist principles to be developed into culturally sensible narratives. However, diis jars widi the extensive body of theoretical and empirical literature that suggests that the process, as well as the content, of diought is socio-culturally shaped (Fiske et al. 1998). As children mature, diey are socialised into a commu nity o f minds from whom diey learn die appropriate ways of representing the world around them. This premise opens the pos sibility that patterns of essentialist thinking may be acquired, or at least formatively moulded, as a result of people’s encounters with the social world. Indeed, research shows that the propensity to engage in essentialist thought (as well as the precise content of essentialist ideas) varies systematically across cultural groups, including those differentiated by religion (Bimbaum et al. 2010; Diesendruck & Haber 2009), nationality (Malialingam & Rodriguez 2003), social status (Malialingam & Rodriguez 2006), political conservatism (Rhodes & Gelman 2009), and race (Jayaratne et al. 2009). This suggests that social experience can affect the very impulse to think in essentialist terms, rather than merely supplying the narratives that are tacked onto the funda mental, cognitively given precepts. C&S acknowledge the proposition that essentialist thinking is a product of socialisation, but dismiss this hypothesis as implausible. The sole empirical grounds provided for diis position relates to die failure of research to detect sufficient evidence of overt transmis sion of essentialism within parent-child conversations. Verbalised parent-child interaction is, however, an extremely narrow proxy for the whole spectrum of social influences on individual cogni tion. Engagement with die social world occurs through many channels - through institutions such as die mass media, education, commercial markets, and politics, as well as immediate verbal and non-verbal interpersonal interactions. All such means of commu nication are viable vectors of essentialist ideas. As an example of one such channel of social influence, research has suggested that the popular diffusion of scientific knowledge can propagate essentialist representations of particular social groups (Dar-Nimrod & Heine 2011). Recent research on media coverage of neuroscience shows that a key way in which neurosci ence is communicated to the public is via emphasising that differ ences between social groups are biologically rooted (O’Connor et al. 2012). This neuro-essentialism of social categories is exemplified by the ubiquitous trope of “the [adjective] brain” (e.g., “the male brain,” “the gay brain,” “the criminal brain”), which expressly condenses the essence of a given category into the notion of a distinctive brain type that is universally shared by all category members. The proliferation of such messages within the public sphere may trigger essentialist thinking in those who encounter them. Experimental research has shown that exposing people to information about the purported biogenetic foundations of, for example, gender (Brescoll & LaFrance 2004; Coleman & Hong 2008) or race (Keller 2005; No et al. 2008; Williams & Eberhardt 2008) exacerbates essentialist beliefs and corresponding processes of stereotyping and discrim ination. Though C&S acknowledge that biological information can be recruited into the “stories” that elaborate inherencebased assumptions, they do not consider whether exposure to
Copyright of Behavioral & Brain Sciences is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.
