Essentialism and attribution of monstrosity in racist discourse: Right‐wing internet postings about Africans and Jews

Holtz, Peter; Wagner, Wolfgang

doi:10.1002/casp.1005

Cited by 67 publications

(38 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Prejudice and discrimination differ from social stereotyping in that they involve negative feelings towards (in the case of prejudice) and negative behavior towards (in the case of discrimination) a group, instead of, or addition to, expectations of within‐category similarity (Brewer & Brown, ). Consistent with Allport's theorizing, explicitly essentialist beliefs, such as beliefs that membership in a religious or ethnic group is determined by genes, or that social categories have sharp boundaries that cannot be crossed, have played central roles in some of the most pernicious instances of social prejudice throughout human history (e.g., Hitler's Aryanism; the white power movement in the United States; Holtz & Wagner, ; Yzerbyt, Judd, & Corneille, ). In addition to contributing to the out‐group dislike that defines prejudice, social essentialism has also been proposed to negatively influence inter‐group relations by leading people to view category boundaries as discrete and inflexible, thus decreasing the likelihood that people will choose to interact with members of other groups (Bernstein, Sacco, Young, Hugenberg, & Cook, ; Levy & Dweck, ; No et al., ; Williams & Eberhardt, ; Zagefka, Nigbur, Gonzalez, & Tip, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 88%

How does social essentialism affect the development of inter‐group relations?

Rhodes

Leslie

Saunders

et al. 2017

Developmental Science

101

134

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Psychological essentialism is a pervasive conceptual bias to view categories as reflecting something deep, stable, and informative about their members. Scholars from diverse disciplines have long theorized that psychological essentialism has negative ramifications for inter-group relations, yet little previous empirical work has experimentally tested the social implications of essentialist beliefs. Three studies (N = 127, ages 4.5-6) found that experimentally inducing essentialist beliefs about a novel social category led children to share fewer resources with category members, but did not lead to the out-group dislike that defines social prejudice. These findings indicate that essentialism negatively influences some key components of inter-group relations, but does not lead directly to the development of prejudice. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS• Essentialism has been proposed to have negative social ramifications.• Three studies experimentally tested this proposal among young children.• Essentialism led children to withhold resources from out-group members.• Essentialism did not lead to out-group dislike. | INTRODUCTIONExpecting a gentle baby tiger to inevitably grow up to be ferocious, an apple seed to develop into an apple tree even if planted in an olive grove, or a young girl growing up in a household of boys to prefer princesses to trucks, all reflect a conceptual commitment to psychological essentialism (Medin & Ortony, 1989). Psychological essentialism is a pervasive conceptual bias to view categories (e.g., tigers, apple trees, girls) as reflecting something deep, stable, and informative about their members, as highly predictive of individual development regardless of other influences, and as marking fundamental similarities among members and differences between kinds (Gelman, 2004). Essentialist beliefs shape how people represent and reason about many types of categories from at least the early preschool years onward (Gelman, 2003).Essentialism has most often been studied in the case of biological categories, such as animal species. For example, essentialist beliefs about tigers entail thinking that whether an animal is a tiger is stable and determined by birth, that tigers are fundamentally similar to each other and different from non-tigers, and that an animal -once born to tiger parents -will inevitably grow up to be ferocious, even if it looks different from other tigers (e.g., is white instead of orange) or is raised in an unusual environment (e.g., in a zoo, where it has few opportunities to learn or practice ferocious behaviors; Gelman, 2004;Medin & Ortony, 1989;Prentice & Miller, 2007). By at least age 4, children make inferences in line with each of these beliefs (Gelman & Markman, 1986, 1987Gelman & Wellman, 1991;Waxman, Medin, & Ross, 2007; for review see Gelman, 2003).In the case of animal categories, psychological essentialism may help get conceptual development off the ground and facilitate knowledge acquisition by allowing children to overlook superficial differences (e.g., between orange ...

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 88%

How does social essentialism affect the development of inter‐group relations?

Rhodes

Leslie

Saunders

et al. 2017

Developmental Science

101

134

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Both migrants and Greeks During the last decade, using Internet forums as sites for data collection has become popular in psychology (Holtz, Kronberger & Wagner, 2012). Virtual environments are recommended when researchers want to gather naturalistic data, which have resulted without the researcher's interference and influence (Hine, 2000;Holtz & Wagner, 2009). …”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using national history to construct the boundaries of citizenship: An analysis of Greek citizens’ discourse about immigrants’ rights.

Kadianaki¹,

Andreouli²,

Carretero³

2018

Qualitative Psychology

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In this paper we advance a qualitative approach to study the interconnection between representations of history and representations of citizenship. We argue that representations of the national past are important resources on which different constructions of citizenship are based. Our empirical context is the heated debate that emerged as a result of the announcement of new citizenship legislation in Greece. We used the online comments posted in the forum of the Ministry of Internal affairs following the announcement of the legislation to study how national history was represented by Greek citizens and how these representations functioned to form different arguments regarding migrants' citizenship rights. Our analysis identified four themes in representations of national history: continuity of the nation, idealization of the past, moral obligation towards the past, and homogeneity or heterogeneity of the nation. We show that these ideas largely sustain an exclusive, essentialist, ethnic conception of the nation as a distinct, homogenous and continuous entity of people sharing a common genetic heritage. More inclusive arguments were based on seemingly pluralistic ideas that implicitly entailed banal nationalist assumptions or assimilatory ideas towards migrant inclusion. We conclude that commentators' historical representations inhibit critical understanding of the past and consequently of a more open and plural understanding of the future. Future research should focus on examining how formal and informal education may promote such representations and on the political implications of these for intergroup relations in multicultural contexts.

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“…A study of extreme right‐wing internet postings shows a particularly strong example of biologically based essentialism (Holtz & Wagner, forthcoming). The discourse developing in the postings shows a strong tendency to essentialize the categories of Jews and Africans/Blacks and to ascribe them immutable attributes, an essence, that effectively make them “natural kinds”.…”

Section: Constructing Essencementioning

confidence: 99%

Construction and Deconstruction of Essence in Representating Social Groups: Identity Projects, Stereotyping, and Racism

2009

Self Cite

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Projecting essence onto a social category means to think, talk, and act as if the category were a discrete natural kind and as if its members were all endowed with the same immutable attributes determined by the category's essence. Essentializing may happen implicitly or on purpose in representing ingroups and outgroups. We argue that essentializing is a versatile representational tool (a) that is used to create identity in groups with chosen membership in order to make the group appear as a unitary entity, (b) that outsiders often draw on a group's essentialist self‐construal in their judgements about the groups, (c) that judgements about members of forced social categories are often informed by essentialist thinking that easily switches to discrimination and racism, and (d) that under certain historical and political conditions members of social categories and groups may contest their essentialized identity, such as parts of the feminist movement, or that they may attempt to reconstruct an essentialized identity, such as parts of the homosexual movement or the largely defunct European nobility. Besides explicit political and power interests, we see communication processes and language use as a tacit force driving essentialization of social categories.

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Essentialism and attribution of monstrosity in racist discourse: Right‐wing internet postings about Africans and Jews

Cited by 67 publications

References 22 publications

How does social essentialism affect the development of inter‐group relations?

How does social essentialism affect the development of inter‐group relations?

Using national history to construct the boundaries of citizenship: An analysis of Greek citizens’ discourse about immigrants’ rights.

Construction and Deconstruction of Essence in Representating Social Groups: Identity Projects, Stereotyping, and Racism

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