Are ethnic groups biological "species" to the human brain? Essentialism in our cognition of some social categories
Are ethnic groups biological "species" to the human brain? Essentialism in our cognition of some social categories
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DOI：
10.1086/321802
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发表时间：
2001-08-01
影响因子：
2.2
通讯作者：
Gil-White, FJ
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Gil-White, FJ
如果种族行为者将种族群体描述为本质化的“自然”群体，尽管种族本质并不存在，我们必须理解为什么。这篇文章提出了一个假设和证据，即人类处理种族群体（和其他一些相关的社会类别），就好像他们是“物种”，因为他们与物种的表面相似性使他们输入到最初进化到处理物种级别类别的“生活类”心理模块。主要的相似之处是（1）基于类别的内婚制和（2）基于血统的成员资格。进化鼓励了这一点，因为将种族群体作为物种处理至少在祖先的环境中解决了与干扰歧视和行为预测有关的适应性问题。同种族（如同种）有许多强烈相关的“属性”，这些属性在第一次检查时并不明显。由于族群之间的不同规范导致协调失败，因此与外群体成员的互动代价高昂，因此将族群视为物种会适应性地促进对内群体的相互歧视（包括内婚制）。它还促进了归纳概括，这使得获得可靠的知识，行为预测，而无需太多昂贵的互动与外群体成员。本文回顾了相关的认知科学文献，并提出了来自蒙古的认知田野实验和民族志证据来支持这一假设。
If ethnic actors represent ethnic groups as essentialized "natural" groups despite the fact that ethnic essences do not exist, we must understand why. This article presents a hypothesis and evidence that humans process ethnic groups (and a few other related social categories) as if they were "species" because their surface similarities to species make them inputs to the "living-kinds" mental module that initially evolved to process species-level categories. The main similarities responsible are (I) category-based endogamy and (2) descent-based membership. Evolution encouraged this because processing ethnic groups as species-at least in the ancestral environment-solved adaptive problems having to do with interactional discriminations and behavioral prediction. Coethnics (like conspecifics) share many strongly intercorrelated "properties" that are not obvious on first inspection. Since interaction with out-group members is costly because of coordination failure due to different norms between ethnic groups, thinking of ethnic groups as species adaptively promotes interactional discriminations towards the in-group (including endogamy). It also promotes inductive generalizations, which allow acquisition of reliable knowledge for behavioral prediction without too much costly interaction with out-group members. The relevant cognitive-science literature is reviewed, and cognitive field-experiment and ethnographic evidence from Mongolia is advanced to support the hypothesis.