Psychological essentialism is a pervasive pattern of thinking that has been implicated in a host of unpleasant societal processes. As such, the endeavour of Cimpian & Salomon (C&S) to elucidate the roots of this psychological tendency is an important undertaking. However, we argue that the model they have developed sustains one clear void: Namely, it underplays the influence of social factors on the development of essentialist beliefs, particularly 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 the surface content that allows these essentialist principles to be developed into culturally sensible narratives. However, this jars with the extensive body of theoretical and empirical literature that suggests that the process, as well as the content, of thought is socio-culturally shaped (Fiske et al. Reference Fiske, Kitayama, Markus, Nisbett, Gilbert, Fiske and Lindzey1998). As children mature, they are socialised into a community of minds from whom they learn the appropriate ways of representing the world around them. This premise opens the possibility 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 (Birnbaum et al. Reference Birnbaum, Deeb, Segall, Ben-Eliyahu and Diesendruck2010; Diesendruck & Haber Reference Diesendruck and Haber2009), nationality (Mahalingam & Rodriguez Reference Mahalingam and Rodriguez2003), social status (Mahalingam & Rodriguez Reference Mahalingam and Rodriguez2006), political conservatism (Rhodes & Gelman Reference Rhodes and Gelman2009), and race (Jayaratne et al. Reference Jayaratne, Gelman, Feldbaum, Sheldon, Petty and Kardia2009). 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 fundamental, 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 this position relates to the failure of research to detect sufficient evidence of overt transmission 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 cognition. Engagement with the social world occurs through many channels – through institutions such as the mass media, education, commercial markets, and politics, as well as immediate verbal and non-verbal interpersonal interactions. All such means of communication 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 Reference Dar-Nimrod and Heine2011). Recent research on media coverage of neuroscience shows that a key way in which neuroscience is communicated to the public is via emphasising that differences between social groups are biologically rooted (O'Connor et al. Reference O'Connor, Rees and Joffe2012). 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 Reference Brescoll and LaFrance2004; Coleman & Hong Reference Coleman and Hong2008) or race (Keller Reference Keller2005; No et al. Reference No, Hong, Liao, Lee, Wood and Chao2008; Williams & Eberhardt Reference Williams and Eberhardt2008) exacerbates essentialist beliefs and corresponding processes of stereotyping and discrimination. Though C&S acknowledge that biological information can be recruited into the “stories” that elaborate inherence-based assumptions, they do not consider whether exposure to this biological information might itself cultivate essentialist beliefs, which would not otherwise have emerged.

The model's relative neglect of social influence restricts its applicability to real-world instances of essentialism-fuelled prejudice and discrimination. Although the authors acknowledge that the content of essentialist beliefs can deviate between category domains, they do not engage with the evidence that different human categories attract varying levels of essentialism (Haslam et al. Reference Haslam, Rothschild and Ernst2000; Joffe & Staerklé Reference Joffe and Staerklé2007). An account of essentialism that hinges on a basic cognitive bias cannot elucidate why, for example, categories relating to eye colour do not elicit the level of essentialism that is directed at categories relating to gender or race. Without due attention to the modulating influence of societal processes, the model cannot address the key question of why particular social groups, within particular historical contexts, become constituted as homogeneous, immutable, and denigrated entities. Neither does it aid in discriminating between those contexts in which essentialist identities are internalised by marginalised groups, and cases where oppressive essentialist identities are actively challenged and resisted (Mahalingam Reference Mahalingam2007). Indeed, characterising essentialism as a product of instinctive cognitive mechanisms may lend an air of inevitability, obscuring the processes by which change can be effected in the essentialism that particular groups in society face.

Undoubtedly, essentialist beliefs are premised upon cognitive (and affective) patterns, and these merit empirical elaboration. However, social contexts shape how these basic cognitive tendencies manifest and hence their implications for individuals and society. In building an account of essentialism that foregrounds instinctual cognition to the exclusion of formative social factors, C&S's model may itself exemplify an inherence-based explanation. It thereby risks eliding the social interests and agendas that selectively channel the malignancies of essentialism towards particular sectors of society.