I view essentialism as the idea that a specific way of how people word things, which in turn, causes stereotypes. In the article, Appiah defines essentialism as “children assume that these superficial differences – the ones that lead to applying the label – reflect deeper, inward differences that explain a great deal of how people behave.” (26) Many people believe that they was a sentence is worded, can lead to stereotyping. For example, in the article Appiah discusses the concept or Zarpies. Zarpies are made up people who for example, were scared of ladybugs. One group of kids were shown them with generics and the others were not. The children who were shown the Zarpies without generics were less likely to assume that all the Zarpies were the same, or scared of the ladybugs. I think that they way people word things can have an impact on whether or not they are going to assume that person’s characteristics. Children also have a sense of essentialism too. In the article by Susan Gelman, she states “Once children learn a new fact about one member of a category, they generalize the fact to other members of that category, even if the two category member look substantially different. (405) Children tend to automatically sort things into groups on their own. I think it is just part of how their brain in wired, so when they learn something new, they automatically group it into a category even if it doesn’t fit there.
