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L (2008) The relation between essentialist beliefs and evolutionary reasoning
| Venue: | Cognitive Science |
| Citations: | 22 - 4 self |
BibTeX
@ARTICLE{Shtulman_l(2008),
author = {Andrew Shtulman and A Laura Schulz B},
title = {L (2008) The relation between essentialist beliefs and evolutionary reasoning},
journal = {Cognitive Science},
year = {},
pages = {1049--1062}
}
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Abstract
Historians of science have pointed to essentialist beliefs about species as major impediments to the discovery of natural selection. The present study investigated whether such beliefs are impediments to learning this concept as well. Participants (43 children aged 4–9 and 34 adults) were asked to judge the variability of various behavioral and anatomical properties across different members of the same species. Adults who accepted within-species variation—both actual and potential—were significantly more likely to demonstrate a selection-based understanding of evolution than adults who denied withinspecies variation. The latter demonstrated an alternative, incorrect understanding of evolution and produced response patterns that were both quantitatively and qualitatively similar to those produced by preschool-aged children. Overall, it is argued that psychological essentialism, although a useful bias for drawing species-wide inductions, leads individuals to devalue within-species variation and, consequently, to fail to understand natural selection.
Keyphrases
essentialist belief evolutionary reasoning within-species variation natural selection withinspecies variation present study incorrect understanding useful bias preschool-aged child species-wide induction different member anatomical property major impediment psychological essentialism response pattern selection-based understanding
