Publications
Publications
- Cognitive Science
Normative Judgments and Individual Essence
By: Julian De Freitas, Kevin P. Tobia, George E. Newman and Joshua Knobe
Abstract
A growing body of research has examined how people judge the persistence of identity over
time—that is, how they decide that a particular individual is the same entity from one time to the
next. While a great deal of progress has been made in understanding the types of features that
people typically consider when making such judgments, to date, existing work has not explored
how these judgments may be shaped by normative considerations. The present studies demonstrate that normative beliefs do appear to play an important role in people’s beliefs about persistence. Specifically, people are more likely to judge that the identity of a given entity (e.g., a hypothetical nation) remains the same when its features improve (e.g., the nation becomes more egalitarian) than when its features deteriorate (e.g., the nation becomes more discriminatory). Study 1 provides a basic demonstration of this effect. Study 2 shows that this effect is moderated by individual differences in normative beliefs. Study 3 examines the underlying mechanism, which is the belief
that, in general, various entities are essentially good. Study 4 directly manipulates beliefs about
essence to show that the positivity bias regarding essences is causally responsible for the effect.
Keywords
Concepts; Essentialism; Normative Factors; Persistence; True Self; Morality; Identity; Moral Sensibility; Perception
Citation
De Freitas, Julian, Kevin P. Tobia, George E. Newman, and Joshua Knobe. "Normative Judgments and Individual Essence." Cognitive Science 41, no. S3 (2017): 382–402.