The Effect Of Ethnicity Essentialism On Cognitive Complexity

Psychological essentialism is the belief that social category share hidden,inborn,and inalterable “essences”.As a very important social identity,ethnicity would most likely be highly essential.Taking ethnicity essentialism as a starting point,the present study explores that the deleterious effect of essentialist mindset would undermine general social cognitive.Once activated,the essentialist mindset would crystallize the conceptual network which is the basis of cognitive structure used to organize and process information,therefore,essentialism might reduce the differentiation degree of cognitive structure,that is to say,essentialism might reduce the level of cognitive complexity.In addtion,essentialism could satisfy the individual strong desire to seek certainty,and reduce the stress and anxiety when people facing ambiguity and decreasing the consumption of cognitive resources.Thus it will enhanc individual desire and motivation to seek certainty in the face of ambiguity,that means that essentialist mind-set would induce a generalized need of cognitive closure which would be negatively related to cognitive complexity because a simplistic cognitive system for interpreting the environment might provide.Thus,we expected that need of cognitive closure might mediate the relation between essentialism and cognitive complexity.Three studies have been conducted to verifie hypothesises,as described below.Firstly,110 Han students from a northwest normal university participated in study 1.They completed a questionnaire aimed at assessing their ethnicity essentialism?ethnic stereotype and cognitive complexity.The openness and extroversion personality characteristics were also measured to control their impact on cognitive complexity.The results showed that essentialism simultaneously predicted ethnic stereotype and cognitive complexity,even when controlling for gender,age,and personality characteristics.This suggests that the essentialism is an important factor impacting ethnic stereotype and cognitive complexity.Secondly,115 Han students participated in study 2.An experimental method was used to test the causal link between essentialism and cognitive complexity.Participants were randomly assigned to read the article advocating the essentialist view of ethnicity and the article advocating the social constructionist view of ethnicity.Then,the role category questionnaire is used to measure cognitive complexity.The result illustrates that participants in the essentialist ethnicity condition showed weaker cognitive complexity than those in the social constructionist condition.It is first time to provide evidence for the causal impact of essentialism on cognitive complexity.In study 3,we examined the need of cognitive closure as the underlying mechanism driving the essentialism-complexity link in 128 Han students.Specifically,we tested the mediation hypothesis directly using the same priming manipulation as in study 2,and we assessed the need of cognitive closure and cognitive complexity using the need of cognitive closure scale and object sorting test respectively.It is observed that when the need of cognitive closure was included in the logistic regression analysis of the effect of priming on cognitive complexity,the need of cognitive closure emerged as a significant and negative predictor of cognitive complexity.These findings illustrate that the deleterious effects of ethnicity essentialism on cognitive complexity was partially mediated by the need of cognitive closure.In study 4,we recruited a sample of 108 Tibetan colleges to examine the generalizability of the essentialism-cognitive complexity causal relationship to minority cultural members.Both experiments had similar to study 3.The results show,however,the generalizability of the relationship to minority cultural members is partially valid.The possible reasons for the results have been disscussed.In conclusion,ethnicity essentialist has a great influence on cognitive complexity,and the relationship was partially mediated by the need of cognitive closure.It was suggested that the deleterious effects of essentialism are also hazardous for general social cognitive rather then negative intergroup implications.And,undoubtedly,the current study has offered an interesting new angle to improve cognitive complexity.