Essentialism and Ethnoracial Bias: A Meta-Analysis

Psychological essentialism is the tendency to attribute a shared, underlying, and unobservable essence to social categories, which can lead to bias toward them. This meta-analysis synthesized correlational ( N = 27,731 participants, k = 298 effects) and experimental ( N = 3,728 participants, k = 22 effects) evidence (January 2000–May 2024) associating essentialism with ethnoracial (racial, ethnic, national groups) bias. Essentialism and bias were moderately positively correlated ( r = 0.25, p < .001), which was attenuated when accounting for study-level and sample characteristics. Study region, setting, and gender were important covariates. Type of essentialism was a significant moderator. However, essentialism did not predict bias ( g = 0.21, p = .181). This held across different types of essentialism, which may reflect low statistical power in some instances. We found no evidence that study quality moderated the essentialism–bias association but found evidence of publication bias only with the correlational studies. The correlational evidence, along with the absence of causal evidence, suggests that essentialism may predict bias only under certain conditions and/or that bias may lead to increases in essentialism. However, experimental limitations may obscure these effects. Future research should explore additional moderators, test motivational frameworks and associative mechanisms, and refine experimental manipulations.