Essentialist beliefs about social categories

This study examines beliefs about the ontological status of social categori es, asking whether their members are understood to share fixed, inhering es sences or natures. Forty social categories were rated on nine elements of e ssentialism. These elements formed two independent dimensions, representing the degrees to which categories are understood as natural kinds and as coh erent entities with inhering cores ('entitativity' or reification), respect ively. Reification was negatively associated with categories' evaluative st atus, especially among those categories understood to be natural kinds. Ess entialism is not a unitary syndrome of social beliefs, and is not monolithi cally associated with devaluation and prejudice, but it illuminates several aspects of social categorization.