The Psychology of Reification: Perceiving Social Reality as Mind-Independent

Human societies are built from shared beliefs, norms, and institutions, yet these arrangements often feel as fixed as natural laws. Philosophers and social theorists have long described this tendency as reification: the perception of socially constructed realities as mind-independent, but it has rarely been examined empirically. We investigated how people represent the mind-dependence of social reality across nine studies (N = 4,892). Using scale development, multilevel modeling, explanatory framing manipulations, and large-scale mapping of 200 social facts, we measured individual and structural variation in mind-dependence attributions and tested their consequences. Participants reliably distinguished social from natural facts, and mind-dependence judgments formed a construct separable from essentialism. Institutionalized arrangements appeared less mind-dependent, whereas intentional explanations increased perceived mind-dependence. These attributions predicted expectations of economic volatility and moral responsibility. Together, the findings establish a psychological foundation for understanding when social reality is perceived as mind-dependent versus reified.