Psychological Essentialism and Intersectional Invisibility: Uniting Literatures

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin D. Goodman
Keyword(s):  
Psychological Essentialism

Concept modeling, essential properties, and similarity spaces

2001 ◽  
Vol 24 (6) ◽  
pp. 1105-1106
Author(s):  
Peter Gärdenfors
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Similarity ◽  
Psychological Essentialism ◽  
Similarity Space ◽  
Essential Properties ◽  
Concept Modeling

Bloom argues that concepts depend on psychological essentialism. He rejects the proposal that concepts are based on perceptual similarity spaces because it cannot account for how we handle new properties and does not fit with our intuitions about essences. I argue that by using a broader notion of similarity space, it is possible to explain these features of concepts.

Psychological Essentialism

2016 ◽  
pp. 80-123
Author(s):  
Sheri Young
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Psychological Essentialism ◽  
Diversity And Inclusion ◽  
Social Settings ◽  
Diverse Groups ◽  
Malicious Intent

This chapter uses a case study, and supporting literature, to explore the function of Psychological Essentialism (the process of giving meaning to perceived “sameness”) in explaining tensions that often arise as we struggle to improve our understanding of diversity and inclusion in higher education, as well as in other social settings. The case study presented throughout the chapter was constructed as an amalgamation of experiences diverse faculty typically report while working on campuses struggling with recruiting and retaining diverse groups. It provides examples of experiences that occur on a range from malicious intent to those that occur, seemingly, without consciousness. The larger question is whether religious and social institutions approach essentialism and stereotyping differently, when it occurs. Seemingly, they do not. The conclusion of this chapter offers solutions for dealing with the barriers faced when attempting to create campus climates that are nurturing and supportive rather than hostile and exclusionary.

scholarly journals Undergraduate Biology Students’ Teleological and Essentialist Misconceptions

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florian Stern ◽  
Kostas Kampourakis ◽  
Catherine Huneault ◽  
Patricia Silveira ◽  
Andreas Müller
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Developmental Psychology ◽  
Biology Education ◽  
First Year ◽  
Test Results ◽  
Natural Phenomena ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Biology Students ◽  
Psychological Essentialism ◽  
Biological Phenomena

Research in developmental psychology has shown that deeply-rooted, intuitive ways of thinking, such as design teleology and psychological essentialism, impact children’s scientific explanations about natural phenomena. Similarly, biology education researchers have found that students often hold inaccurate conceptions about natural phenomena, which often relate to these intuitions. In order to further investigate the relation between students’ conceptions and intuitions, we conducted a study with 93 first year undergraduate students in biology. They were asked to express their level of agreement or disagreement with six misconception statements and to explain their choices in a two-tier test. Results showed a tendency for students to agree with teleological and essentialist misconceptions. However, no association was found between students’ teleological and essentialist conceptions as expressed in their agreement or disagreement with the various misconception statements. Moreover, we found evidence of a variable consistency across students’ answers depending on the misconception considered, which indicates that item features and contexts may have an effect on students’ answers. All together, these findings provide evidence for considerable persistence of teleological and essentialist misconceptions among students. We suggest future directions for thinking, studying, and analyzing students’ conceptions about biological phenomena.

Evolution Makes More Sense in the Light of Development

2014 ◽  
Vol 76 (8) ◽  
pp. 493-498 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kostas Kampourakis ◽  
Alessandro Minelli
Keyword(s):  
Developmental Biology ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Conceptual Development ◽  
Evolutionary Developmental Biology ◽  
Public Communication ◽  
Common Ancestry ◽  
Development Research ◽  
The Public ◽  
Psychological Essentialism ◽  
Evo Devo

We highlight some important conceptual issues that biologists should take into account when teaching evolutionary biology or communicating it to the public. We first present conclusions from conceptual development research on how particular human intuitions, namely design teleology and psychological essentialism, influence the understanding of evolution. We argue that these two intuitions form important conceptual obstacles to understanding evolution that should be explicitly addressed during instruction and public communication. Given that a major issue in evolution is understanding how very different forms may share common ancestry – antievolutionists have argued that this is inconceivable – we suggest that evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo), which provides concepts and evidence that large morphological change is possible, could be used to address the intuitions that organisms have fixed essences (psychological essentialism) and that their structure indicates some kind of intentional design (design teleology).

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