Research in the CORE Lab

Essentialist thinking is a default template for mental representations of concepts; the central feature of this template is an assumed underlying, causal essence. This “essence” is thought to give category members their identity, and is responsible for similarities between category members. As a reasoning heuristic, essentialist thinking can give rise to a belief in innate potential; or the inevitable emergence of essential properties at some point. Underlying structure is another central feature of essentialism. That is, essentialist thinking leads us to readily form categories based on properties beyond those that are superficial or immediately apparent. You may think of essentialism as a “placeholder;” one can believe that a category has an essence without knowing what that essence is. 

Teleological thinking is causal reasoning in which a goal, purpose, function, or outcome of an event is taken as the cause of that event. It is the cognitive belief that something can be explained as a function of its effect as opposed to a function of its cause. Teleological thinking is often explored in the context of evolution. We may consider, for instance, that mammals have hair or fur in order to maintain body temperature. Alternatively, it may be used in explanations of moral outcomes or object functions. To understand moral righteousness solely by an action’s consequence, or to define the origin of a fork entirely by its function to hold food would be teleological. Importantly, teleological reasoning is not always or necessarily incorrect, but it may lead to misconceptions. 

Anthropic thinking is the tendency to anchor our understanding of non-human entities in terms of our experience with humans. There are at least three major types of anthropic thinking. Anthropomorphism involves the attribution of human-like properties to non-human entities. Human exceptionalism describes the belief that humans are discontinuous from the rest of the natural world, unique, superior, and/or not subject to natural laws or processes. Human analogy involves using what we know about humans to embellish our understanding of other living things by creating analogies between humans and nonhuman animals. Anthropic thinking plays a large role in our understanding of biology, and in environmental thinking.