Intercorrelations between essentialist beliefs and the social identities of religion, political affiliation, and nationality

Authors

Truman Deree, James Madison UniversityFollow

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

ORCID

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9691-6168

Date of Graduation

5-14-2022

Publish

yes

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts (BA)

Department

Department of Psychology

Second Advisor

Kala J. Melchiori

Third Advisor

Fawn-Amber Montoya

Fourth Advisor

Mary Thompson

Abstract

In this study, I investigated the relationships between political identity, religious identity, and national identity, as well as related attitudes about essentialism. I hypothesized that having essentialist attitudes about one identity group will correlate with having essentialist attitudes about other identities. I also predicted that the more important an identity is to one’s sense of self, the more likely they will be to hold essentialist attitudes about that identity. Finally, I predicted that having a Republican identity positively correlates with essentialist views of one’s national identity. In this paper, I discuss the theoretical basis, as well as the method, sampling procedures, limitations, and future directions.