Children and Essentialism

Abstract

The relative effects of nature versus nurture on human behavior is a very popular topic in the field of psychology. Because of this, children are often studied in an attempt to understand how development works. The present study was conducted to determine if children’s race and gender influence their beliefs that both physical and personality traits are biologically based, also known as essentialism. To test children’s beliefs in essentialism, participants aged four to eight were interviewed on Zoom. Eighty-five Children met one-on-one with researchers and listened to age-appropriate stories. They then answered a series of essentialist questions about the stories. All stories had the same format: a baby was born to one set of parents with certain characteristics (e.g., loud and extroverted). After being born, the baby was then adopted by a second set of parents with different characteristics (e.g., quiet and introverted). The participants were then asked (after a few memory check questions) if they thought that the baby’s characteristics would match the birth parents or the adopted parents. If the participant answered that the baby’s characteristics would match the birth parents, then the participant was thought to have essentialist views. The results showed that both white and participants of color answered the questions with a wide range of responses, and their races did not predict essentialist answers. Gender also did not predict essentialist answers in male, female, and nonbinary participants. Overall, the results of the experiment did not suggest that children’s ideas of essentialism vary based on their race or gender.