Essentialist Bias Toward Mental Disorders: Brain Injuries are Presumed to be Congenital

First published: April 19, 2021 https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12970

Commentary

Massive campaigns in the past have continued to promote the view that mental disorders are brain disorders and aim to blame mental disorders for them. However, when mental disorders are associated with neurobiological correlates, the public's attitude toward patients seems to be more severe and the prognosis worse.

The study was investigating whether this misconception may result from the essentialist presumption that brain disorders are congenital.

In the study, members of the public were encouraged to reason about mental disorders that were diagnosed by either brain or behavioral tests and had congruent beneficial value.

The participants found that when the diagnosis was supported by brain tests, compared to behavioral tests, the disorder was more likely to be congenital and invariant. These results provide the first indication that people spontaneously essentialize brain-related mental states, even when brain probes do not provide additional diagnostic or genetic information.

This bias suggests that people see the biological essence of an organism as materially embodied.