Understanding Essentialist Beliefs through the Cultural Evolutionary Framework

Abstract

This research applied a cultural evolutionary framework in addressing two essentialist beliefs related to health and gender. The first part of the thesis focused on whether genetic essentialist cognition translates to biased transmission of genetic etiological information, using a generational learning experimental method. The second study extended this question to include individual factors (e.g., perceived vulnerability to diseases) that may influence the retention and transmission of genetic-based etiological information. Both studies showed that disorder framing affected which etiology is recollected and transmitted, with the recollections of genetic etiology demonstrating stronger sensitivity to the type of disorder, particularly those that were self-relevant. The second part of the thesis examined gender essentialist cognitions in the context of gender inequality and social influence. First, findings regarding gender essentialist cognition and social status in the long-term maintenance of gender inequality were reviewed. Then, in three studies of diverse samples, the effects of gender on whether individuals preferred to socially-learn from expert women versus men was tested. In Study 3 (when given a choice), a female expert was chosen more often but this did not translate to more social learning, unlike when the expert was a man when social learning was higher (particularly when the learners were men). In Study 4 (when assigned a model), expertise and gender cues played important roles in the social learning of women compared to men, especially when the role model was a man. In sum, the studies examined whether genetically-based essentialist beliefs are preferentially transmitted and whether social status of male and female experts influenced social learning. The findings provide novel insights into cultural transmission and social learning, which in turn has potential to impact the transmission of cultural mores of large-scale cooperative groups.