Previous research based on documented incidents of police uses lethal force and experimental studies using computer sorting programs have demonstrated that incorrect decisions tend to occur more frequently with Black relative White suspects. Using virtual reality, the current study examined psychophysiology underlying decision suspects, interactive impact racial essentialism. Forty-nine crimina...

In two studies, 6–12-year-old children (Study 1: N = 58; Study 2: N = 38) and adults (Study 2: N = 22) rank ordered intentional, teleological and essentialist explanations for different behaviours of living-kind groups representing a range of biological kinds from plants to humans. Overall, humans elicited more intentional explanations, insects and plants elicited more essentialist explanations...

The present study considered the impact of gender essentialism on sex differences in subject choice. Secondary school children, aged 11-12 years (N = 30) and 15-16 years (N = 26), were randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions, and completed a thought experiment requiring them to make inferences about two gendered attributes; academic subject ability and gender-stereotyped prope...

Kuhn’s incommensurability thesis seems to challenge scientific realism. One response to that challenge is to focus on the continuity of reference. The causal theory of reference in particular seems to offer the possibility of continuity of reference that would provide a basis for the sort of comparability between theories that the realist requires. In “Dubbing and Redubbing: The Vulnerability o...

In behavioral ecology some authors regard the innateness concept as irretrievably confused whilst others take it to refer to adaptations. In cognitive psychology, however, whether traits are 'innate' is regarded as a significant question and is often the subject of heated debate. Several philosophers have tried to define innateness with the intention of making sense of its use in cognitive psyc...

Essentialism is often criticized for producing biased behavior. Because it is a view through which people attempt to grasp the essence of things, it appears contradictory that essentialism might result in distortions of reality. Somewhere within essentialist cognitive processes there must be mistakes or omissions that fail to capture reality correctly. In this paper, I treat essentialization as...

The present research examines the implications of psychological essentialism for attitudes toward same-sex marriage (SSM), a hotly contested policy issue. Based on the literature on psychological essentialism, we tested the novel proposition that negative SSM attitudes are the result of essentialist thinking about the institution of marriage itself, the idea that marriage is universal, unique a...

The main aim of this study is to examine the effectiveness critical pedagogy and high-order thinking skills in upgrading values-based education intercultural understanding. Critical a transformational approach that aims embrace educational values, identity, commonality beneficence value individual freedom today’s globalised world. In regard, teacher’s role help learners aggrandize their cultura...