This article introduces the notion of genetic essentialist biases: cognitive biases associated
with essentialist thinking that are elicited when people encounter arguments that genes are …

Social categorization is a universal mechanism for making sense of a vast social world with
roots in perceptual, conceptual, and social systems. These systems emerge strikingly early …

Behavioral scientists routinely publish broad claims about human psychology and behavior
in the world's top journals based on samples drawn entirely from Western, Educated …

Social essentialism entails the belief that certain social categories (eg, gender, race) mark
fundamentally distinct kinds of people. Essentialist beliefs have pernicious consequences …

Conceptual change research investigates the processes through which learners
substantially revise prior knowledge and acquire new concepts. Tracing its heritage to …

It is widely recognized that language plays a key role in the transmission of human culture,
but relatively little is known about the mechanisms by which language simultaneously …

Much of children's knowledge is derived not from their direct experiences with the
environment but rather from the input of others. However, until recently, the focus in studies …

Previous research indicates that the ontological status that adults attribute to categories
varies systematically by domain. For example, adults view distinctions between different …

Two studies (N= 456) compared the development of concepts of animal species and human
gender, using a switched‐at‐birth reasoning task. Younger children (5‐and 6‐year‐olds) …

People have a fundamental motive to view their social system as just, fair, and good and will
engage in a number of strategies to rationalize the status quo (Jost & Banaji, 1994). We …