D I G I TA L I Z A C I Ó N

EPISTEMIC VIOLENCE
IN PSYCHOLOGICAL
SCIENCE
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Held, B. (2019). Epistemic violence in psychological science.

(pp.1-22). Theory & Psychology. Bowdoin College, USA.
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Epistemic violence in
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the (othered) people solve

the problem?

Barbara S. Held
Bowdoin College, USA

Abstract
A primary target of indigenous psychologists and critical psychologists is the epistemic violence
found in mainstream research. The epistemic violence derives from two alleged mainstream
tendencies: (a) omitting concepts/conceptions of othered peoples and (b) interpreting observed
group differences to be caused by inherent inferiorities of othered peoples. In seeking remedial
research practice, some theoretical psychologists distinguish (a) psychological knowledge from
and for the folk, which they advocate and (b) psychological “knowledge” about the folk, the
alleged source of objectification of othered peoples. Though seemingly self-evident, this for/about
prepositional divide may not be clear. First, mainstream epistemic violence often depends on
folk notions. Second, the use in science of folk concepts/conceptions has advanced oppressive
purposes, whereas some mainstream findings may serve progressive goals. I exemplify with
race concepts, especially racialized essentialism and dehumanization, and I demonstrate how
mainstream science sometimes reveals mechanisms of othering that may inform progressive
social reform efforts.

Keywords
epistemic objectivity versus relativity, epistemic violence, indigenous psychology, knowledge
about people versus from and for people, racialized essentialism and dehumanization

Despite debate within theoretical psychology about a proper philosophical foundation of

psychological knowledge, concern with mainstream contribution to the oppression of
othered peoples has coalesced into a burgeoning Indigenous Psychology movement.1

Corresponding author:
Barbara S. Held, Bowdoin College, 6900 College Station, Brunswick, ME 04011, USA.
Email: bheld@bowdoin.edu
2 Theory & Psychology 00(0)

Considerable attention is given to the epistemic violence said to derive from two observed
mainstream tendencies: (a) omission of the concepts embedded in the lived experience
of othered peoples and (b) interpretation of findings of difference between peoples to be
caused by inherent inferiorities of those who are already othered, so as to cast them as
problematic and/or of lesser (or even sub) humanity.
It is in this dual-problem context that indigenous psychologists have arisen, both inde-
pendently of and in concert with critical psychologists, who also seek to combat epis-
temic violence in psychology. Accordingly, I use the term “critical-cum-indigenous
psychologist” when referring to those who identify with both groups, and “critical psy-
chologist” or “indigenous psychologist” when referring to those in one or the other
group. And though I agree with Tissaw and Osbeck’s (2007) assertion that “there really
[is] no ‘mainstream’ that exists independent of specific research trajectories” (p. 160 ), in
speaking of the mainstream I use their traditional gloss, namely, “a conception of psy-
chology-as-science and commitment to experimental methods as the basis of inquiry”
(p. 158). The natural science “methodolatry” (or “physics envy”) said to follow faithfully
from this conception of mainstream science is a prime target of those who seek a psy-
chology cleansed of epistemic violence.
Mainstream omission of concepts of othered folk and other-denigrating causal inter-
pretation of observed group difference are not necessary components of this methodola-
try, but they play a complementary role in escalating the epistemic violence that can
serve social, political, and economic oppression. Taking the epistemic bull by the horns,
critical-cum-indigenous psychologist Thomas Teo (2018) advocates remedial action that
distinguishes (a) “from-below” psychological scientific knowledge, which is of, from,
and for the folk and (b) “from-above” psychological scientific “knowledge,” which is
about the folk. The from-above (about-the-folk) prepositional “attitude” is seen as an
objectifying source of epistemic violation, which deprives many peoples of their own
subjectivity. Targeting mainstream epistemic violence, critical-cum-indigenous psychol-
ogists Christopher, Wendt, Marecek, and Goodman (2014) write, “It is time to set aside
the ‘rhetoric of objectivity’ that pervades much of U.S. psychology” (p. 652). In casting
objectivity as a rhetorical device, they imply that there can be no objective psychological
knowledge, except in wishful rhetoric that conduces to othering.2
This anti-objectivist (and by extension anti-objectifying) sentiment is pervasive
among theoretical psychologists (e.g., Clegg, 2017; Kirschner, 2005; Richardson &
Fowers, 2010), who repeatedly take aim at a conception of epistemic objectivity that was
not necessarily adopted by those who pursued it in the first place (see Held, 2007, chap.
8). Although the term “objective” and its cognates therefore carry considerable interpre-
tive baggage, I nonetheless use that term in opposition to the kind of epistemic relativity
that inheres in truth defined relative to the beliefs of a socioculturally defined group of
people (including, especially, beliefs about the truth of the claims in question). Truth
without such true-for qualification is what I mean, first and foremost, by objective truth.
I define objective truth negatively, so as not to unduly restrict the many kinds of methods
and (empirical) evidence that are demanded by (or are relative to) any particular (empiri-
cal) research question. I call the type of epistemic relativity that I contrast with objectiv-
ity as just defined “true-for (a-group) relativism,” to distinguish it from the kinds of
“relativisms” that are necessary for objective inquiry in any field.3 And because I
Held 3

appreciate objectivity’s many historically situated meanings within science (Daston &
Galison, 2007), I take no issue with those who prefer the term “nonrelativist” (or, more
precisely, “non-true-for relativist”), to describe the epistemology I advance herein.
Objectivity has of course stood in contrast to subjectivity, whose meaning has received
renewed attention in theoretical psychology. Theorists often agree that a bona fide psy-
chological science entails understanding situated subjectivity, which requires person-
level inquiry about life as it is lived/experienced within a sociocultural context. Including
the situated nature of subjectivity in science is often thought to demand a nonobjectivist
epistemology—one relative to the subjectivity of those studied, including a people’s
beliefs about themselves. This view of subjectivity is professed to help reduce epistemic
violence by standing in distinction to (a) person-level inquiry sans culturally bounded
concepts, beliefs, and understandings and (b) subpersonal-level inquiry, which ignores
everyone’s lived experience in investigating structures and mechanisms by way of natu-
ralistic methods (e.g., Wertz, 2016). Subpersonal-level inquiry, in its allegedly “objecti-
fying” study of “mechanisms,”4 is, to use Teo’s terminology, about people.
In what follows I aim to demonstrate how the person-level knowledge favored by
theoretical psychologists can be either of, from, and for people or about people. Therefore
I argue that the for/about prepositional divide is conceptually fuzzy, especially in the way
that epistemic violence attributed to from-above mainstream science often enough
depends on folk notions from below and in how some mainstream psychological find-
ings about people may serve progressive goals and so also be for (othered) people. This
I demonstrate by way of theoretical/philosophical and empirical study of race, with
emphasis on how racial essentialism is treated in both folk (from-below) and expert
(from-above) conceptions of race. I also review recent mainstream psychological work
which contributes to our understanding of mechanisms of othering, including the dehu-
manization that often follows from racialization.

Indigenous psychology
Teo (2018) notes that “indigenous psychology may refer to indigenized psychology, to a
psychology that is indigenous to a culture, or to the psychology of indigenous people”
(p. 155). He also cites Kurt Danziger’s (2006) definition, namely, “attempts to ‘develop
variants of modern professional psychology that are more attuned to conditions in devel-
oping nations than the psychology taught at Western academic institutions’” (Teo, 2013,
p. 2).
The Indigenous Psychology Taskforce (see note 1) describes indigenous psychology
as “a reaction against the colonization/hegemony of Western psychology” (Task Force
on Indigenous Psychology, n.d., para. 1, line 3), with “need for non-Western cultures to
solve their local problems through indigenous practices and applications” (para. 1, lines
4–5) and “to recognize [themselves] in the constructs and practices of psychology”
(para. 1, lines 6–7). This description thus subsumes a limitless plurality of indigenous
psychologies. Indeed, on the Taskforce website Dharm Bhawuk notes that indigenous
psychology does not and should not seek “homogenization” with mainstream psychol-
ogy (Bhawuk, n.d.). On my interpretation, homogenization here entails epistemic
violence.
4 Theory & Psychology 00(0)

Epistemological violence
Teo (2008) defines epistemological violence (EV) as a practice that occurs in psycho-
logical science when

interpretative speculations regarding results implicitly or explicitly construct the “Other” as

problematic. The term epistemological suggests that these speculations are framed as knowledge
when in reality they are interpretative speculations regarding data. The term violence denotes
that this “knowledge” has a negative impact on the “Other” and that the interpretative
speculations are produced to the detriment of the “Other.” (p. 57)

Teo (2010) judges these interpretations to be person-level/intentional acts of violence:

the “subject of violence is the researcher, the object is the Other, and action is the inter-
pretation of data that is presented as knowledge” (p. 295). An example of a violent inter-
pretive act is explaining findings of lower IQ scores in Black people to be caused by an
immutable heritable difference in intelligence, with all the social, political, and economic
disadvantages that follow. As Teo (2018) states,

If “I” choose an interpretation of data that is harmful to a group of persons, knowing that
equally valid alternative theoretical interpretations are possible, and if “I” present that
interpretation as fact or as knowledge, then a form of EV has been committed. (p. 222)

Critical and indigenous psychologists do not deny the othering and oppression caused by
folk belief, but rather take aim at ways in which findings of psychological science, in
their received status as expert knowledge, have contributed to othering in scientific acts
of omission and commission. They are therefore rightly keen to determine the means by
which psychological science can reduce epistemic violence.

Reducing epistemic violence

Folk versus scientific concepts and conceptions
The distinction between folk belief and scientific knowledge claims is more pronounced
in the natural sciences than in the human sciences, where overlap between scientific and
folk concepts abounds (think happiness studies). Because natural kinds seemingly enjoy
no subjectivity, they remain unaffected by our views about them, thereby freeing natural
scientists from fear of violating them epistemically, however much our actions damage
the physical/biological world, even with benefit of extensive knowledge (think global
warming). By contrast, psychologists are always in danger of epistemically violating the
subjectivity of those whom we study.
And so critical-cum-indigenous psychologists are right to insist on receiving the
voices of othered peoples as sources of knowledge production (e.g., Christopher et al.,
2014; Gone, 2016, 2017; Sundararajan, 2014, 2015). Teo’s (2018) from-above/from-
below distinction is thus pertinent, and he exemplifies by way of personality
psychology:
Held 5

Since many personality theories are constituted from above and reflect the needs of power (is
this person conscientious?), it is possible to develop a theory from below. I suggest that this
would be possible with Nunberg’s (2012) historical and linguistic reconstructions of assholism
(A)5 . . . [For example,] it would not be difficult to develop a psychological instrument to
measure “A” as a psychological personality characteristic. That the discipline . . . does not
have such an “A” scale reflects an order in which the interests from below .  .  . are less relevant
than the interests from above. Yet, it belongs to many people’s everyday experiences to
encounter “A”s on a regular basis when dealing with authority. .  .  . A similar example would be
a psychological measure for “bullshitter” (B) based on Frankfurt’s (1986/2005) descriptions
and analysis. (p. 91)

Teo insists on a science replete with ordinary folk concepts and theories—those based on
“everyday experiences”—in place of the dominant “from-above” concepts and theories
of science that, he says, meet “the needs of power.” In that last quotation he focuses on
concepts not of othered folk but of dominant (Western) folk. Despite this nuance, I do not
find the above/below distinction to be sufficiently clear.
First, folk concepts and meanings are not necessarily ignored by scientists. For
instance, common/folk understandings of race have been studied by scientists for well
over a century. Second, although assholism is a folksy folk concept, it does not follow
that less folksy concepts, like conscientiousness, do not constitute folk concepts, owing
to their use in science. Within Western/American culture, the conscientious person is
arguably no less familiar than is the asshole, even if the former is less colloquial.6 Third,
any concept, however folksy, can be used for purposes of regulation and oppression,
including “asshole.” After all, racialized othering and oppression is often preceded by
folk concepts and conceptions of race. Folk/from-below concepts, beliefs, and under-
standings are therefore not necessarily benign: a scale to measure assholism could be
used to reject certain people—such as applicants to psychology graduate programs. In
short, respecting and privileging folk concepts and conceptions in science does not auto-
matically ensure respecting and privileging the folk.
We should of course investigate the bases for selection of all concepts and concep-
tions in psychology. But this does not entail a clear line of demarcation between folk
concepts from below and expert concepts from above. If by “from above” Teo means
only the concepts that are selected by scientists for their fit with questionable regulatory
purposes, then the worry is not (a) the folksy vs. scientific nature of the concepts them-
selves, but rather (b) the reasons for their selection, which implicate the ways in which
group differences are interpreted and the real-world purposes to which those interpreta-
tions are put (see Teo, 2010). I return to this distinction (a vs. b) in due course; here I
elaborate the prepositional aspect of epistemic violence in psychology.

Those pesky prepositions

Teo (2013), in following critical psychologist Klaus Holzkamp’s view of psychology as
“conducting research for people and not about people,” endorsed the idea of a theory and
research “from the standpoint of the subject” (p. 8; see Schraube & Osterkamp, 2013). And
he expressly linked the for/about distinction with the from-below/from-above distinction:
6 Theory & Psychology 00(0)

“It is possible to develop a theory that focuses on everyday experiences stemming from
below (instead of from above), a concept not ‘about,’ but a concept ‘for’ and ‘from’ people”
(Teo, 2018, p. 90).

True-for and true-about prepositional “attitudes”

Does a theory for people entail a relativist epistemology in which a theoretical explana-
tion is true for members of a group of people (Gs), but not true for all others (nonGs)?
After all, Teo (2015, 2018, p. 112) himself does not dismiss objectivity, so long as its
form accounts for (socioculturally) situated subjectivity. Teo (2015) concludes,
“Objectivity remains a virtue of academic work, . . . just not the narrow objectivity
demanded by mainstream psychology” (pp. 147–148). Whether the mainstream demands
a narrow form of objectivity “as a rhetorical tool to justify the status quo or a precon-
ceived agenda” (p. 139) is not obvious, and I return to that matter.
Here I consider how knowledge for a group can readily be taken to entail a true-for-
some-but-not-for-all form of relativism.7 I elaborate meanings of “true-for” and “true-
about” prepositional attitudes, using two statements that blur the relativist vs. objectivist
meaning that may inhere in the for/about distinction: (a) it is true about Gs that Gs
believe X and (b) X itself is true for Gs. Let us stipulate that X is a proposition about the
cause of “depression,”8 such as black bile, demonic possession, neurotransmitter defect,
or self-deprecating thoughts. Whichever X we select, statement (a) is either objectively
true or false—it either is or is not the case that Gs believe X, regardless of the truth status
of X itself, which is a separate matter. Now, what does “X is true for Gs mean”?
First, this use of “for Gs” could mean that the objective truth status of X itself is mean-
ingless or irrelevant: what matters (for X’s epistemic status) is, in relativistic terms, what
Gs take to be the truth status of X—what Gs (and only Gs) believe about the truth of X.
By contrast, the objective truth status of X does not depend on anyone’s beliefs about the
truth of X (Held, 2007, chaps. 5, 8); it depends on evidence independent of beliefs about
X’s truth. Admittedly, the form of warrant that should be taken as truth-maker in any
given case is a bone of contention. Nonetheless, that any choice of justifiers reflects
foundational values that guide all scientific acts of discovery does not thereby reduce all
scientific knowledge to true-for forms of relativism (see note 3).
Second, “true for Gs” could mean that what Gs take to be true should be respected
epistemically only so long as their beliefs have sanguine consequences for them and do
not oppress nonGs. In this sense, true-for Gs means good for Gs and not bad for nonGs,
and so it constitutes the kind of pragmatism that many theoretical psychologists advo-
cate, in which the epistemic criterion consists in the socioculturally situated conse-
quences of holding claims (such as X) to be true. Thus, saying that X (now stipulated as
demonic possession causes “depression”) is true for Gs signifies that believing X brings
to Gs beneficial consequences. The beneficial consequences do not result solely from
holding belief X, but rather, perhaps, from the likelihood that belief X inclines Gs to also
believe that exorcism rituals will rid them of their demons (Belief X1), which motivates
Gs to participate in rituals whose beneficial effects might exceed such exorcism rituals
as taking antidepressant drugs—without drug side-effects! The point is, there is a chain
from beliefs to acts based on those beliefs, which together bring beneficial effects.
Held 7

If these beneficial effects are realized, they constitute the epistemic standard of truth:
they make X true. And if believing X (and X1) carries beneficial effects for Gs, but not,
upon empirical investigation, for nonGs, then X is not true for (X is false for) nonGs. In
that case the (pragmatic) truth status of X holds only relative to (or for) Gs. Here we can
begin to see slippage from for-Gs (objective) knowledge to true-for Gs (relativist)
knowledge: the latter entails true-for relativism and the former does not, in that it is also
in principle “true for” nonGs (i.e., for everyone) that holding Belief X benefits Gs. That
the true-for relativist epistemic standard allows that nonGs can know it to be the case that
belief X (when held by Gs) carries beneficial consequences for Gs is logically problem-
atic for anti-objectivists who advance true-for relativism.
We can now see how “true for Gs” (in the relativist sense) depends on “ true about
Gs” (in an objectivist sense). First, knowing that Gs take X to be true can be translated
into “It is true about Gs that they believe X.” Second, knowing that taking X to be true is
followed by desirable consequences for Gs can be translated into “It is true about Gs that
desirable consequences follow their believing X.” Therefore, the proposition that believ-
ing X conduces to sanguine consequences for Gs (and perhaps only Gs) is also objec-
tively true about Gs implicitly—nonGs can in principle know this fact. And so if all
“about” propositions constitute the objectifying knowledge claims of mainstream psy-
chology, then true-for claims, such as this “for Gs” claim, also constitute objectifying
claims about Gs, for nonGs.
I return to the for/about distinction in due course. Here I turn to the kind of speculative
interpretation that Teo finds especially prone to epistemic violence: knowledge not for
people but what I consider “knowledge” against people.

Speculative interpretation of observed group differences

Teo (2010) acknowledges that we may interpret the causes of some group differences in
sanguine ways—ways which may contribute to achieving progressive goals. He exem-
plifies this by interpreting the fact that there are fewer female faculty members at elite
universities in the United States to be caused by their oppressive treatment at such insti-
tutions (p. 299). The sanguine (at least for women) nature of this interpretation may,
according to Teo, be no less speculative (and so no more warranted) than the violent one
that causally attributes the gender difference to women’s inherently inferior intellects.
This emphasis on interpretive speculation raises the question of whether Teo thinks
there can be no causal interpretations (of observed group differences) that are warranted
enough to consider as facts, owing especially to the underdetermination of theory by
(theory-laden) data. If so, we could not say, with objectivist warrant, that between-group
differences on, say, measures of achievement are caused, even in part, by nonheritable/
nonessentialist variables, such as power imbalances that sustain oppressive/impover-
ished environments. Nor could we make the culturally informed case that it is true about
Gs that believing X contributes to consequences that are beneficial for Gs, and for that
reason we should not impose on Gs concepts and beliefs that are alien to Gs. Thus,
efforts to advance progressive agendas might be impeded by rejection of objectivist war-
rant on grounds that it constitutes a confidence trick.
8 Theory & Psychology 00(0)

Do critical-cum-indigenous psychologists think that scientific claims about the infe-

rior essences of some peoples are immoral solely owing to the oppressive acts that follow
from holding them, or because they are in themselves epistemically unwarranted, regard-
less of their consequences? Even if no malign consequences followed from believing
that Black, Jewish, and Muslim people are essentially inferior or subhuman (hard to
imagine, but just suppose), I suspect that progressively minded psychologists might still
be inclined to reject that proposition on grounds that it is patently—dare I say objec-
tively?—false. My point is, the objective falsehood of such denigrating claims may not
be so readily rejected by true-for relativists, in a disinclination to qualify those false-
hoods as epistemically relative to anyone. If so, they put themselves in a logical bind: in
rejecting objective psychological truth, they cannot logically embrace objective falsity.
One virtue of true-for statements may be that the “for” preposition signals the obvious
falsity of a belief, without having to say more—for instance, saying “it is true for White
Supremacists (WSs) that Black, Jewish, and Muslim people have inferior/subhuman
essences (Belief B)” signals that the rest of us should not believe B. We may nonetheless
insist on epistemic qualification of both the truth status of B itself and the pragmatic
consequences of holding B to be true. Although it is arguably “good” for WSs to believe
B (B is true for WSs in a pragmatic sense)—for example, in the false sense of superiority
WSs may derive from viewing non-White people as having less intrinsic value—this is
not what I take critical-cum-indigenous psychologists to mean by “good for” and there-
fore true.
To be sure, (objectively) unwarranted (e.g., racist) belief from-below can have and
has had oppressive consequences, independent of science. But it is only when scientists
seek to validate such a folk-belief, especially essentialist causes of racial differences, and
then proclaim its scientific legitimacy, that the folk belief “graduates” to epistemic vio-
lence. This we see in racist science, which has regrettably “raised” racist folk-belief to
the undeserved status of knowledge, in service of oppression. Hence the critical-
cum-indigenous psychology call for use of from-below concepts and beliefs must be
qualified before we can assume that their adoption in science ensures sanguine conse-
quences. Moreover, some mainstream research has progressive implications.

When folk conceptions degrade and mainstream/scientific

conceptions elevate: The case of racial essentialism
Biophilosopher Luc Faucher (2017) articulated four beliefs that together constitute a
standard folk conception of racial essentialism: (a) “Individuals share a number of physi-
cal and psychological features that are specific to their group and that they do not share
with any other group”; (b) “That they exhibit these features is explained by the presence
of an underlying and unobservable cause, an immutable ‘essence’”; (c) “The possession
of this essence is necessary and sufficient for membership in the group”; and (d) “They
share these features in virtue of a biological mechanism that ensures the transmission of
the racial essence from generation to generation” (p. 250).
Although some question whether all folk race-notions entail essentialism, many folk
have held racially essentialist notions long before modern Western science emerged to
Held 9

impart them from above with race concepts. This includes not only the European Middle
Ages but also classical antiquity (see Heng, 2018; Isaac, 2006; Smith, 2011).9 To what-
ever extent scientists have committed epistemic violence in “validating” such folk views
in their speculative interpretations, the road between folk and scientific conceptions runs
both ways, not least in psychology. To appreciate this cross influence, let us take a closer
look at essentialism in folk and scientific conceptions of race.

Essentialism in folk and scientific conceptions of race: Bloodlines

Some scholars deliberately blur the distinction between scientific and folk conceptions.
For example, philosopher of biology Lisa Gannett (2010) maintained that

the dichotomization of scientist-expert and nonscientist-commonfolk conceptual schemes . . .

rules out consideration of ways in which scientific ideas about race and wider cultural ideas
about race intersect. . . . Scientific and folk meanings are autonomous insofar as cross-
classification and differences in extension are permitted without necessitating a demand for
revision of the folk meaning; however, scientific and folk meanings are not wholly autonomous
because science influences the folk meaning and the folk meaning often provides a starting
point for scientists in their research. (p. 375)

Gannett (2010) asserts that a priori assumptions made by blood group researchers (e.g.,
“which phenotypic characteristics matter, who counts as indigenous to a territory”)
“prove integral to whatever a posteriori classification results” (p. 375). However one
evaluates the search for a blood basis for racial boundaries, one cannot deny that Nazi
science, as a prime example, rested on ancient folk notions of racialized blood lines,
notions that could in principle constitute the kind of a priori folk categories that Gannett
accepts. Yet Gannett is not insensitive to “scientific racism”: she fears that “dichotomiza-
tion of scientist-expert and nonscientist-commonfolk conceptual schemes” wrongly sup-
ports the “assumption that only ‘ordinary people’ can be racist,” when scientists “are not
immune to racism” (p. 376). After all, racist sciences have depended on a priori/folk
racial essentialism in Faucher’s terms. And from racial essentialism there followed the
dehumanization10 that racist sciences aided, according to philosopher of biology and
psychology David Livingstone Smith (2014).
On the racist view that within each member of certain racialized human groups there
resides an inferior essence, unique to the group, which makes each member of that group
a lesser human, if not subhuman (Smith, 2011, 2019b), we have an example of a concept,
race, from the folk—from below. History provides examples of how such folk under-
standings, with their racial essentialism intact, have been plucked from below to advance
racist sciences, including psychological science. As Smith (2019b) observes,

During the Weimar period, folk-conceptions of race and blood became yoked to the new science
of serology to produce a potent, blood-centered racialist cocktail. .  .  . Weimar seroanthropologists
[sought] to use blood typing to objectively distinguish one race from another. . . . The race-
obsessed intelligentsia of the Nazi movement [hoped, though without success] to use the
analysis of blood to distinguish “true” Germans from Jews. (p. 87)
10 Theory & Psychology 00(0)

According to Smith (2019b), the Nazi Ministry of Propaganda claim that racial “spiritual
predispositions” are “encoded” in the blood was used to “justify” the Nazis’ assertion
that Jews are inherently dangerous, thereby necessitating their extermination—including
Jews who looked Nordic. About North American racism, Smith (2019b) writes that the
same blood-based genealogy “was the basis for the notorious one-drop rule of the
American South, which remained in legal force well into the twentieth century” (p. 89).
On Smith’s (2019b) view, these beliefs collectively constitute a widespread folk the-
ory of race: “The [folk] idea of race is the idea of a human natural kind the membership
in which is transmitted biologically by descent” (p. 96). Folk understanding of race is
akin to folk understanding of biological species; they both entail an underlying essence
that causes the observable features that delineate discrete kind membership. This move
from racial concepts to the emergence in the 19th century of both folk and scientific
racial theories is important. According to philosopher of psychology Ron Mallon (2013),
racial theories “became widely shared effectively displacing a mishmash of essentialist
theories with a unified essentialist account of racial difference and hierarchy that could
serve to rationalize and justify European colonial ventures and American slavery”
(p. 86). Such “justification” would entail highly speculative assumptions (about the
cause of group differences) that fan the flames of epistemic violence in racist science.
Smith maintains that to racialize (the act of racializing) invokes an essentialist moral
inferiority, in which the racialized group is given less “intrinsic value” (2014, 2019b).
The function of race concepts and theories among the folk (and in racist science) is there-
fore to situate populations on an inferiority/superiority axis. This function does not serve
what should be the interests of (biological) science: “The only real biological sense of
race is subspecies, and there is insufficient genetic variation between human populations
to qualify them as subspecies” (Smith, personal communication, March 25, 2018; see
Hochman, 2013). Hochman (2017) recommends replacing the term “race” with “racial-
ized group,” to indicate variation across time and place about the peoples selected for
racializing practices. Moreover, there is considerable debate about the reality of race (in
distinction to Hochman’s racialized groups) among philosophers and (biological) scien-
tists; this debate reflects diverse conceptions of race, both within the expert community
and between experts and the folk.

When scientific and folk conceptions of race of diverge

There is debate about how scientific and folk theories of race do and do not intersect, and
whether scientific and folk theories and concepts must intersect, to make progress scien-
tifically—and/or socially (see Gannett, 2010). Philosopher of biology and social sci-
ences Robin Andreasen (2005) maintains that there is reasonable overlap between a
cladistics11 race-concept, which she propounds as biologically real, and folk race
-concepts. By contrast, philosopher of race Joshua Glasgow (2003) finds the overlap to
be insufficient: “How revisionist [in science] can one be about the meaning of ‘race’ and
still call it ‘race’?” (p. 462). Andreasen replies that any divergence presents no problem,
because scientific and folk conceptions of race serve different functions, owing to their
natural-kind vs. social-kind statuses, respectively (see Boyd, 1999; Held, 2017; Khalidi,
2015, 2018, on challenges to this distinction).12
Held 11

Others find divergence between conceptions of human kinds and natural kinds to
impede social progress. As Glasgow (2003) maintained, if scientific and folk concep-
tions of race do not overlap sufficiently, we are no longer talking about race—certainly
not any conception of race that matters for socially progressive purposes, which is why,
for many who hold a pragmatic epistemic attitude, race talk matters. And though Faucher
called race a “damaging fiction” (2017, p. 251) that should be expunged from biology’s
lexicon, he did not inveigh against race talk in the social sciences. This raises a thorny
question.

Can there be race science (in psychology) that is not racist?

If essentialized racial groups are ontological fictions, then investigating psychological
differences between races is not only nonsensical but also likely to be racist. How often
do psychological scientists who insist on heritable racial differences in intellectual capac-
ity and personality traits distance themselves from folk-based essentialization as a prac-
tice akin to and often a component of racialization?
Psychologists James Rushton and Arthur Jensen (2005), in propounding a strong
genetic component in racial intellectual and personality differences, wrote:

The fact that the heritability of IQ is between 0.50 and 0.80 does not mean that individual
differences are fixed and permanent. It does tell us that some individuals are genetically
predisposed to be more teachable, more trainable, and more capable of changing than others,
under current conditions.13 (p. 239)

That “under-current-conditions” qualifier might appease some. Still, the term “geneti-
cally predisposed” suggests a short inferential hop from the causal notion of heritable
component to that of the traditional kind-defining essence that fuels racist beliefs and
acts, especially since there is no reason to think that relevant “current conditions” will
change (for the better) anytime soon. Thus many, including Teo (2011), justifiably fear
the large interpretive leap that inheres in Rushton and Jensen’s (2005) claim that despite
there being no “necessary implication” of causes of within-group variation for causes of
average between-group differences,

within-groups evidence does imply the plausibility of the between-groups differences being
due to the same factors, genetic or environmental. If variations in level of education or nutrition
or genes reliably predict individual variation within Black and within White groups, then it
would be reasonable to consider these variables to explain the differences between Blacks and
Whites. (p. 239)

By contrast, there are compelling arguments against inferring the causes of between-
group differences from within-group sources of variation (e.g., Block, 1996; Lewontin,
1970, 1974).14 Thus, in the above quotation, the terms “plausible” and “reasonable” carry
unwarranted interpretive baggage. Indeed, sociologist Ann Morning (2011) demonstrates
a “continuity between contemporary scientific depictions of race and the essentialism of
the past” (p. 38). She charts racialization from ancient observable physiognomic features
12 Theory & Psychology 00(0)

to 19th- and 20th-century serology, culminating in contemporary DNA science, where

age-old racial essences are “‘buried alive’” (pp. 38, 237–247). Rushton and Jensen
(2005) nonetheless have no difficulty reinforcing “traditional racial groups classifica-
tion” (p. 238), and even assert the “utility” (p. 237) of their findings based on these clas-
sifications, saying that denying them is “likely to be injurious both to unique individuals
and to the complex structure of societies” (p. 285). We may question their stated concern,
given their press to assess racialized psychological differences in the first place (cf.
Sternberg, 2005, p. 300). This returns us to practical considerations.
In a pragmatic spirit, Glasgow and Woodward (2015) asked not “whether races exist”
but rather what we want to do about the fact that “we look different” (p. 465); for them
the reality of race as an ontological kind is far less important than the implications of its
use in science for purposes of “social progress” (p. 465; Glasgow, Shulman, &
Covarrubias, 2009). After all, the idea of distinct races (as essentialized human subspe-
cies if not subhuman kinds) is so entrenched historically and culturally, and carries so
much political, social, and economic baggage, that to ignore it in the social sciences
would constitute a form of epistemic violence—an act of omission. I therefore turn to
ways in which mainstream psychologists have investigated the role of essentialism in
their research on folk conceptions of race.

Mainstream psychology’s investigation of folk conceptions

of race
Social, cognitive, and developmental psychologists have studied folk/from-below con-
ceptions of race. This is not the racist science that uses racial distinctions in service of
empirical differences that are interpreted in denigrating essentialist terms, with oppres-
sive consequences. But neither is it a science expressly infused with from-below con-
cepts and belief. Rather, it is designed to attain non(true-for)relativist (or objective)
evidence, to shed light on the “psychological mechanisms that underlie the way people
think about racialized groups” (Faucher, 2017, note 15, p. 259, see Nelson, 2016).

Racialist cognition and essentializing language

Psychological research demonstrates that we do not essentialize all human groups
equally, and of those that are essentialized “not all instances of them are essentialized in
every culture or at every point in history” (Faucher, 2017, pp. 264–265). This logically
implicates mechanisms to transmit information about “which kinds of groups, in any
given sociopolitical context, should be essentialized” (pp. 264–265). The obvious mech-
anism is language, in supplying cues to rules for essentializing (p. 268). To exemplify,
Faucher cites Gelman and Heyman’s (1999, p. 491) finding that when presented with a
common name such as “carrot eater,” children were more likely to view that property as
“more stable and more likely to persist” (Faucher, 2017, p. 265) than when presented
with a verbal phrase such as “is eating carrots” (p. 265). Moreover, generic statements
(or property generalizations such as “tigers are striped” or “pit bulls have an aggressive
nature”) contribute to the reproduction of essentialist beliefs (Faucher, 2017, p. 265).
Held 13

Certain kinds of generic statements affect the transmission of social essentialism (e.g.,
Gelman, 2003; Rhodes, Leslie, & Tworek, 2012). Philosopher of psychology Sarah-Jane
Leslie (2017) concluded that, upon hearing strong generic statements that she calls
“striking property generalizations” (p. 395; e.g., “mosquitoes carry the West Nile virus”),
we intuitively judge them to be true even when given compelling statistical information
such as “less than one percent of mosquitoes carry the West Nile Virus” (p. 395). Leslie
elaborates, “If even just a few members of a kind possess a property that is harmful or
dangerous, then a generic that attributes that property to the kind is likely to be judged
true” (p. 396).
Psychological research indicates the dependence of negative stereotypes on seeing
members of an essentialized group as highly uniform (e.g., Hamilton, Sherman, Crump,
& Spencer-Rodgers, 2009). Smith (2014) explains how the perceived uniformity of
racialized groups depends on racial essentialism, which rests on psychological essential-
ism—the human propensity to understand kinds by way of hidden essences that cause
observed properties and provide grounds for “inductive inferences about members of
natural kinds” (p. 816; see Bastian & Haslam, 2006; Prentice & Miller, 2007). Smith
(2019b) finds in racial essentialism “a special case of psychological essentialism [that]
conforms to the same general pattern as essentialism about species” (p. 114), such that
psychological essentialism helps explain dehumanization. This, owing to the folk-theory
view of species membership as “absolute rather than incremental.” Here Smith
exemplifies:

The racial essence imagined to be possessed by all and only Black people is supposed to be
what makes such people Black. . . . However, according to essentialist thinking, it’s possible
for a person to be of a race without ever manifesting the appearance and behavior that’s
associated with that race. In the essentialist framework, their essence is latent. . . . So, for
example, the racial essence of Jews is supposed to be greedy, deceptive, and exploitative. Jews
who do not behave in these nasty ways are nevertheless imagined to “have it in them” to do so.
(2019b, pp. 114–115; see Muhammad, 2010; Steinweiss, 2008)

Essentialism in folk race conceptions: Experimental philosophy

Experimental philosophers question the ubiquity of the standard essentialist folk concep-
tion of race. Glasgow et al. (2009) reported a “widespread rejection of the one-drop rule,
as well as the use of a complex combination of ancestral, phenotypic, and social (and,
therefore, nonessentialist) criteria for social classification” (p. 15). Shulman and Glasgow
(2010), after asking (predominantly White) participants whether they think race is real or
merely imagined, classified participants as realists (75%) or anti-realists, respectively.
The realists were asked if they believed that race is determined by looks (biology), by
personality and abilities (psychology), and/or by social ties (sociology). Half of the real-
ists thought of race as “wholly biological,” 21% as “wholly social,” and 20% as a bioso-
cial hybrid (p. 253). Although “racial realists exhibited higher levels of racism” than
anti-realists, the “three realist groups [biological purists, social purists, and biosocial
hybrids] did not differ in their level of racism” (p. 252). This surprising finding raises
14 Theory & Psychology 00(0)

questions about the central role that racial essentialism is theorized by Smith to play in
racialization and dehumanization.
Smith (2019b) rejects the claim that racial essentialism is less pervasive than pre-
sumed. He suspects that when “people use racial labels,” they implicitly believe that
members of each race are instances of a “discrete natural human kind . . . in virtue of
possessing a ‘deep’ [inalienable] essence that is responsible for the surface characteris-
tics that are taken to be typical of the kind” (p. 130; see Wendt & Gone, 2012, pp. 161–
162). He is skeptical of experimental findings such as Glasgow’s, as he worries that
responses to questions about race may reveal respondents’ “beliefs about their beliefs
about race, rather than their beliefs” (p. 132). This raises concerns about how social
desirability and moral identity may influence responses, to which I return.

Essentialism in racialization and dehumanization

In asserting the ubiquity of essentialist folk theory of race, Smith (2019b) says that such
belief is “all that is necessary [in] connecting the dots between racializing people and
dehumanizing them” (p. 135). He describes how psychological essentialism is core to
both processes, in that racialized people

are regarded as categorically other while retaining membership in the more encompassing
category of the human. They may pass as members of the dominant group in . . . having an
appearance that departs from their supposed racial essence [which always threatens to reveal
itself]. But when racialized people are dehumanized, they are pushed even further into the
terrifying twilight zone of otherness. The structural similarity between dehumanization and
racialization .  .  . is explained, in large measure, by the fact that both are rooted in psychological
essentialism. (p. 137)

Smith’s racialization/dehumanization distinction rests logically on the folk metaphysical

idea of the “Great Chain of Being”:

If you demote a human being sufficiently, there is a qualitative change such that (“mere”)
racialization gives way to [the] dehumanization that presupposes a subhuman essence. [He
exemplifies racialization as a human as] slaveholders’ conceiving of Blacks as “irredeemably
underdeveloped” humans in the antebellum South [and racialization as a subhuman as]
conceiving of Jews as vermin who infest such as cockroaches or rats, in Nazi Germany. (Smith,
personal communication, May 2018; also see Smith, 2014)

Smith (personal communication, May, 2018) says that “when people are racialized, they
are relegated to a distinct and inferior sub-rank of the human category,” and he considers
this a “dress rehearsal” for dehumanization: “Once a human population is consigned to
an inferior human rank it takes relatively little cognitive effort to thrust them still lower,
into the realm of the subhuman.” On his theory (Smith, 2019b, in press), the quasi-
automatic nature of moving from racialization to dehumanization depends on the ease
with which cognitive mechanisms/processes transform the former into the latter. Thus,
mainstream research that sheds light on these theorized mechanisms/processes might
well be relevant to achieving progressive goals (see Nelson, 2016).
Held 15

Some mainstream research supports Smith’s theorized link between essentialist folk
race-conceptions and attitudes toward racialized others. Psychologists Williams and
Eberhardt (2008) defined racial “biological essentialism” as understanding “race . . . to
be a fundamental and stable source of division among humankind that is rooted in our
biological makeup” (p. 1033); they found that holding biologically essentialist views
predicts lack of motivation to change racial inequalities:

Individuals who understand race to be biologically derived are more accepting of racial
inequities [and] tend to understand racial inequities as natural, unproblematic, and unlikely to
change . . . , a relationship that cannot be accounted for by racial prejudice. (pp. 1034, 1043)

And in a unique twist on motivational factors, psychologists Rothschild and Keefer

(2017) demonstrated that “moral outrage”—arguably a pervasive from-below phenom-
enon—can be motivated by genuine need for justice or by defensive feelings of guilt that
threaten moral identity. Those differentiated by these motivations also differ in their
likelihood of taking social action to right injustices. If guilt feelings are alleviated in the
latter group, so is the outrage—and thus the likelihood of taking restorative action.
In sum, in examining the nature and consequences of racial essentialism in traditional
psychological subdisciplines, mainstream researchers have, in recent years, studied
from-below or folk notions of race in non-othered folk. Many of these scientists do so
with an eye toward combating racialization and other forms of othering.

Anticipated objections
I have cited examples of mainstream research about the nature of folk race-conceptions,
mechanisms/processes of othering, and psychological conditions under which progres-
sive action is more and less likely to be motivated. Does this research meet the morally
infused epistemic criteria of critical-cum-indigenous psychologists? In mainstream study
of how mostly White participants conceive of, perceive, and respond to othered peoples,
many critical-cum-indigenous psychologists may find elements of epistemic violence—
not only in a failure to include othered peoples’ concepts/conceptions, but also in an
emphasis on (speculative causal) conclusions about people.
These are legitimate concerns. Nonetheless, research about the mechanisms/processes
of racialization and dehumanization among non-othered folk might serve “interests from
below” (Teo, 2018). This research could aid in developing policies and interventions
designed to combat racist beliefs more successfully. For example, apropos of Smith’s
theory (2019b, in press), knowledge of cognitive processes that help transform racialized
kinds into dehumanized kinds could implicate ways to derail that process. And given the
pervasive tendency to believe that racialized kinds entail essentialist psychological com-
ponents, it might help in combating that belief to understand the workings of psychologi-
cal essentialism itself, including its part in our inclination to see people who look different
from us as discrete racial (rather than racialized) kinds or subspecies.
Smith (2018; also see 2019a) transcends psychological insights in applying philosopher
of biology Ruth Millikan’s (1984) teleofunctional theory to the problem of racist/dehuman-
izing ideologies. On that view, although these ideologies are not facts of the matter, they are
16 Theory & Psychology 00(0)

(a) believed to be true and they (b) preserve certain advantages of the powerful over the
powerless. We must not conflate (a) and (b), as Smith (2018) maintains that holders of such
ideologies do not do so cynically—that is, with intention to preserve the advantage con-
ferred by such belief, while knowing it is false. Instead they take this content to be true, with
its essentialism intact. Thus, “to determine whether one’s beliefs are ideological, one must
trace the social genealogy of those beliefs, drawing on history rather than psychology”
(Smith, 2018, p. 23). This has educational implications, and Smith (2018) states that “it
may be more effective to educate the sexist about the genealogy of sexist beliefs, so that he
is in a position to recognize their ideological character” (p. 24). Smith thus calls for histori-
cal education, prior to challenging beliefs psychologically, as ahistorical “attitudinal inter-
ventions often conflate intentions with teleofunctions” (p. 24). Although Smith concedes
that this strategy may be insufficient in failing “to address the proximate psychological
causes [of] holding these beliefs” (p. 24), he insists that understanding the historical genea-
logical bases of ideological belief may be “transformative” (compared to epistemological
and/or psychological understanding), precisely because they may put us in a better position
to reveal just how the belief is unwarranted (cf. Strangor, 2016).

Conclusions
Essentialist beliefs and representations from below have historically informed interpreta-
tions of observed group differences in psychological science, whose from-above epis-
temic privilege grants these interpretations the status of knowledge that has often enough
served oppressive sociopolitical agendas. Whether these explanations are seen as war-
ranted, whether judged to be epistemically violent, and whether they entail inferiority,
they do not prove the existence of racial (as opposed to racialized) groups. And so the
question of when race science should be seen as racist science remains.
Combating epistemic violence surely begins with the phenomena we choose to inves-
tigate. Yet, if the selected concepts and conceptions fail to capture not only the experi-
ences of the othered but also the relevant experiences and cognitive-social mechanisms/
processes of those who engage in othering, then psychology’s hoped-for contribution to
reducing othering and oppression is unnecessarily limited.
Demagogues have historically benefited socially, politically, and economically from
their pragmatic epistemic criteria, selected relative to their oppressive goals. Their
“achievements” have derived in part from disguising their true-for falsehoods as objec-
tively warranted truth. And therein lies the problem for anti-objectivists with progressive
purposes: the potential harm of non-objectivist epistemologies may not be readily seen
by its proponents, despite their attunement to progressive ideals, in part because deni-
grating essentialist claims have put been put forth (and received) as objectively true
when they are nothing more than true-for relativist pronouncements.
In challenging the falsity of these denigrating claims, those who seek progressively
informed epistemologies may renounce all psychological knowledge based on objectiv-
ist epistemologies as itself oppressive. In this, aim is taken at the wrong target. The
misappropriation of the mantle of objectivity does not necessitate true-for relativist
knowledge—so long as psychological science proceeds with firm unpacking of histori-
cal and contemporary reasons for, including meanings and uses of, selected concepts,
Held 17

and with appreciation of the fallibility and limits that inhere in all empirical endeavors.
True-for relativist epistemologies do not own these virtues exclusively.
Decades of theoretical-psychology alternatives to objectivist epistemologies have not
put a halt to objectively false claims that are characterized as objectively true. This will
not end with demands for a science stripped of objectivist rhetorical pretension. Because
public policy depends on public opinion, progressive policies might benefit substantially
more from a psychological science that demonstrates the objective falsity of demagogic
essentialist claims than from a science that dismisses those claims on grounds that they
do not, indeed cannot, enjoy their proclaimed (but illusory) objectivity. This proposition
is a pragmatic matter that rests on objective epistemic criteria.
Are mainstream findings about the nature of racialization on the part of non-othered
folk about those of us who have been so studied—or for us? I suggest that they are both
about us—how we construct and act on racialized distinctions—and they are for us—in
the real-world implications of that about-us information for the efforts of those who are
willing to look in the mirror in seeking to combat racist attitudes, acts, and policies, in
pursuit of progressive reform. My argument of course extends to all forms of othering,
including othering based on gender, class, and sexuality. Progress depends on appreciat-
ing not only the experiences of othered peoples but also of those who participate in the
othering, intentionally or not. Pragmatically, this includes objective knowledge of the
oppressive consequences of holding dehumanizing beliefs about othered peoples to be
objectively true. We may be wasting time in trying to eliminate epistemic violence in
psychology by failing to consider all the available evidence—regardless of whether it is
considered to be part of psychology’s mainstream.

Acknowledgements
This article is an extended version of an invited paper, “The culture of science and the science of
culture,” in T. Tjeltveit (Chair), Some diverse ways of knowing. Presidential symposium conducted
at the 2018 Midwinter Meeting of the Society for Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology,
Phoenix, Arizona.

Declaration of conflicting interest

The author declares that there is no conflict of interest.

Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.

ORCID iD
Barbara S. Held https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6374-4232

Notes
  1. See the Indigenous Psychology Taskforce (www.indigenouspsych.org).
  2. Greenfield (2000) rejects the “illusionary methodological concept of objectivity” (p. 232).
Clegg (2017) also rejects “objectvist rhetorics” (p. 162).
18 Theory & Psychology 00(0)

  3. Osbeck cites Ronald Giere’s (2010) “scientific perspectivism,” in which “perspective [is]
imposed by instrumentation and conceptual model” (Osbeck, 2019, p. 105) and does not
“denigrate into [looser] silly relativism” (p. 87).
  4. My use of “mechanism” includes human-kind explanatory components (Held, 2017).
  5. “To understand the meaning of this word, Nunberg asked his participants, on the background
of the events of 9/11, about a scenario in which a person jumped a car rental line in New York
City because they owned a gold credit card (see pp. xii–xiii). His participants chose the word
asshole most frequently for describing this person” (Teo, 2018, p. 91)
  6. My thanks to Chris Schuck for pointing this out.
  7. Long (2019) cites Ratner’s (2008) two foundational principles of indigenous psychology:
ontological/cultural relativism and epistemological relativism.
  8. “Depression” appears in scare quotes to indicate that I do not here endorse any universally
held concept/conception of depression (as either a symptom or a syndrome).
  9. Hochman (2017) uses “covert racialization” to denote “racialization that takes place without
the explicit naming of a group as a ‘race,’” such as in 15th-century Spain (p. 78).
10. Smith (2014) states that to dehumanize is literally “conceiving of others as subhuman crea-
tures” (p. 815).
11. Applied to race, cladistics aims to “represent evolutionary relations among reasonably repro-
ductively isolated human breeding populations” (Andreasen, 2005, p. 95).
12. Andreasen (2005) explains, “In science, race is a taxonomic category that helps to explain
patterns of migration, reaction to adaptive pressures, and the history of human evolution. In
CS [Common Sense], race helps to explain human social relations, racist beliefs and prac-
tices. . . . [Thus] ‘race’ has come to function as a NK [natural kind] term in one context and
a social kind term in another. . . . Since there is significant overlap between these uses, both
deserve the label ‘race’. .  .  . When scientific and folk meanings of NK terms diverge, we need
not revise science to fit CS” (p. 105, cf. Gannett, 2010).
13. Rushton and Jensen (2005) base this remarkable conclusion on findings purported to show
Black people to have on average not only lesser intelligence but also lesser cautiousness and
law abidingness, and greater aggressiveness and impulsivity, when compared with White and
East Asian people (Table 3, p. 265). Kaplan (2015) concludes that heritability “doesn’t tell us
whether a trait will be easy or hard to change [nor] what developmental resources are neces-
sary for the trait to develop normally, nor how changes in those resources will change the
development of the trait” (sect. VI, para. 2). Yudell (2014) documents claims of the inferiority
of Black people in science.
14. Block (1996) explained how conflating the concepts of genetic determination (“what causes a
characteristic”) and heritability (“what causes differences in a characteristic”) creates failure
to understand that heritability is the “ratio of genetically caused variation to total variation,”
not characteristics “passed down” biologically.

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Author biography
Barbara S. Held is the Barry N. Wish Professor of Psychology and Social Studies Emerita at
Bowdoin College. She is author of Back to Reality (Norton, 1995) and Psychology’s Interpretive
Turn (American Psychological Association, 2007) and is co-editor (with Lisa Osbeck) of Rational
Intuition (Cambridge, 2014). She is the 2012 recipient of the APF Joseph B. Gittler Award for
scholarly contribution to the philosophical foundations of psychological knowledge.