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Essentialism and the Expression of Social Stereotypes: A Comparative Study of Spain, Brasil and England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2013

Marcos Emanoel Pereira ,
José Luis Álvaro Estramiana  and
Inge Schweiger Gallo
Marcos Emanoel Pereira*
Affiliation:
Universidade Federal da Bahia (Brazil)
José Luis Álvaro Estramiana
Affiliation:
Universidad Complutense (Spain)
Inge Schweiger Gallo
Affiliation:
Universidad Complutense (Spain)
*
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Marcos Emanoel Pereira. Universidade Federal da Bahia. Instituto de Psicologia. Campus Universitário. São Lázaro. Salvador, BA. (Brazil). E-mail: emanoel@terra.com.br
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Abstract

Over the past few years, one of the most productive directions in the study of the activation and application of stereotypes has been provided by the essentialist concept of categorization. The research presented here studied the impact of two dimensions of essentialist beliefs - naturalism and entitativity-by using data collected from Brazil, Spain and England. The aim was to test whether there was a greater degree of essentialization among the naturalizable categories (sex, age and race) than among the entitative categories (economic condition, religion, political orientation, nationality and social condition). The results not only showed that participants hold more essentialist beliefs with regard to naturalistic categories but also showed the differences in the degree of essentialization across the three cultures. A discussion is conducted on the implications of the present findings, and on the heuristic value of the theoretical model (of the bidimensional nature of essentialism) adopted by this research.

En los últimos años, la concepción esencialista de la categorización se ha consolidado como una de las orientaciones teóricas más fecundas para el estudio de la activación y aplicación de los estereotipos. La presente investigación transcultural realizada en Brasil, España e Inglaterra estudió el impacto de dos dimensiones de las creencias esencialistas –el naturalismo y la entitatividad- sobre la expresión de los estereotipos sociales y comprobó si se produce una mayor esencialización de las categorías naturalizables de sexo, edad y raza, en comparación con el grado de esencialización de las categorías entitativas relativas a la condición económica, la religión, la orientación política, la nacionalidad y la condición social. Los resultados obtenidos mostraron que en las diferentes dimensiones comparativas las categorías naturalizables fueron esencializadas con mayor intensidad que las categorías entitativas. Asimismo, se observaron diferencias entre los tres países en el grado de esencialización. Se discuten las implicaciones de los resultados, así como el valor heurístico del modelo teórico adoptado en la presente investigación sobre la naturaleza bidimensional del esencialismo.

Keywords

essentialismstereotypesnaturalizationentitativityesencialismoestereotiposnaturalizaciónentitatividad
Type
Research Article
Information
The Spanish Journal of Psychology , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , November 2010 , pp. 808 - 817
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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