Essentialist Beliefs about Bodily Transplants in the United States and India

Autor/inn/en	Meyer, Meredith; Leslie, Sarah-Jane; Gelman, Susan A.; Stilwell, Sarah M.
Titel	Essentialist Beliefs about Bodily Transplants in the United States and India
Quelle	In: Cognitive Science, 37 (2013) 4, S.668-710 (43 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0364-0213
DOI	10.1111/cogs.12023
Schlagwörter	Foreign Countries; Human Body; Donors; Philosophy; Cognitive Processes; Personality Traits; Cultural Influences; Psychology; Social Influences; Attribution Theory; Surveys; Beliefs; Religious Factors; Cross Cultural Studies; Cultural Differences; Likert Scales; India; United States + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Ausland; Menschlicher Körper; Philosophie; Cognitive process; Kognitiver Prozess; Individual characteristics; Personality characteristic; Persönlichkeitsmerkmal; Cultural influence; Kultureinfluss; Psychologie; Sozialer Einfluss; Survey; Umfrage; Befragung; Belief; Glaube; Cultural comparison; Kulturvergleich; Kultureller Unterschied; Likert-Skala; Indien; USA
Abstract	Psychological essentialism is the belief that some internal, unseen essence or force determines the common outward appearances and behaviors of category members. We investigated whether reasoning about transplants of bodily elements showed evidence of essentialist thinking. Both Americans and Indians endorsed the possibility of transplants conferring donors' personality, behavior, and luck on recipients, consistent with essentialism. Respondents also endorsed essentialist effects even when denying that transplants would change a recipient's category membership (e.g., predicting that a recipient of a pig's heart would act more pig-like but denying that the recipient would "become" a pig). This finding runs counter to predictions from the strongest version of the "minimalist" position (Strevens,2000), an alternative to essentialism. Finally, studies asking about a broader range of donor-to-recipient transfers indicated that Indians essentialized more types of transfers than Americans, but neither sample essentialized monetary transfer. This suggests that results from bodily transplant conditions reflect genuine essentialism rather than broader magical thinking. (Contains 10 tables and 3 notes.) (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10