essentialism

Gelman’s research has demonstrated that young children possess an essentialist view and even some adults use this same concept. As stated in the lecture slides, Gelman defines essentialism as an “assumption that categories of things in the world have a true, underlying nature or ‘essence’ that causes things to be in particular categories, gives them their identity”. Gelman uses three concepts to provide evidence of essentialism. The first concept is inductive potential. Inductive potential is the ability to group a new member of a category into the preexisting category based on similar traits. The second concept that Gelman uses is innate dispositions. This concept states that nature will not be affected by nurture. The third concept is maintenance of identity. This idea comes from the fact that you can dress something up, but it will remain the same. Gelman believes that children can be born with an essentialist point of view.

Children will use the essentialist view as part of their learning process. Gelman believes that essentialism is an innate part of life that you are born with. Once you start to understand what essentialism is, it is easy to see where she comes up with this idea. Gelman did research on young children to see if they understood what essentialism was. Gelman found that children as young as four understood what inductive potential were. Children understand that “an object will be more similar to members of the same category, even if it looks more similar to members of another category.” To test if children understood the concept of innate disposition, Gelman presented the idea that an animal was raised with another class of animals to children. Gelman than asked the children characterized traits questions about the raised animal. Children understood that nature would beat nurture. The third concept was used to see if children understand that you can dress an object up, but will it remain the same. Keil found that second grade students understood this concept for animal, but not for artifacts. These concepts are basic ideas and it is understandable why children are able to grasp them. As children mature, the concepts do not get abandoned and new concepts are formed.

This week in class I found the concept of essentialism very interesting. It was interesting to me because I could understand how it was related in everyday life. The concepts seem easy enough that a child could easily use it as part of their learning. An example of this would be the concept of Halloween. During the fun of dressing up for Halloween, a child still knows that there is a person behind the costume. Not only do children use essentialism, but adults will use it too. An example would be that if I’m meeting a friend of a friend, I’m assuming that the friends share similar character traits. Another example would be that if I’m seeing something for the first time than I will use underlying categories to define the new item. I agree with Gelman’s idea that essentialism is an innate concept.