Essentialist Beliefs About Bodily Transplants in the United States and India. (30th January 2013)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Meyer, Meredith; Leslie, Sarah‐Jane; Gelman, Susan A.; Stilwell, Sarah M.
• Is Part Of: Cognitive science. Volume 37:Number 4(2013:May)
• Page Start: 668
• Page End: 710
• Publication Date: 2013-01-30
• Subjects: Cognition -- Periodicals; Psycholinguistics -- Periodicals; Artificial intelligence -- Periodicals; 153.05
• DOI: 10.1111/cogs.12023
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0364-0213

Abstract

<abstract abstract-type="main" id="cogs12023-abs-0001"> <title>Abstract</title> <p>Psychological essentialism is the belief that some internal, unseen essence or force determines the common outward appearances and behaviors of category members. We investigated whether reasoning about transplants of bodily elements showed evidence of essentialist thinking. Both Americans and Indians endorsed the possibility of transplants conferring donors' personality, behavior, and luck on recipients, consistent with essentialism. Respondents also endorsed essentialist effects even when denying that transplants would change a recipient's category membership (e.g., predicting that a recipient of a pig's heart would act more pig‐like but denying that the recipient would <italic>become</italic> a pig). This finding runs counter to predictions from the strongest version of the "minimalist" position (Strevens, 2000), an alternative to essentialism. Finally, studies asking about a broader range of donor‐to‐recipient transfers indicated that Indians essentialized more types of transfers than Americans, but neither sample essentialized monetary transfer. This suggests that results from bodily transplant conditions reflect genuine essentialism rather than broader magical thinking.</p> </abstract>