Psychological essentialism: development and adaptation the scale

Abstract

The article presents the results of the development and approbation of the scale of psychological essentialism (belief in invariability of group membership). The results of confirmatory factor analysis conducted on eight different groups (ethnic (Russians / Tajiks / Jews), gender groups (men / women), homosexuals (gay / lesbians) and religious groups (Orthodox / Muslim)) (n = 897), demonstrated the good fit to empirical data. The multi-group confirmatory factor analysis revealed that the different groups measured on the scale, can be compared with each other within a single category. The scale shows good convergent and discriminant validity. On the one hand, psychological essentialism associated with group entitativity, group identification, right-wing authoritarianism, social dominance orientation and justification the social hierarchy; on the other hand there are not correlation between the psychological essentialism and open to experience and attitude to novelty.