Intergroup Violence Without Essentialist Beliefs: The Case of Turkana Cattle Raiders

Essentialism has been hypothesized to be associated with intergroup hostility. However, it is unclear whether ethnic essentialism is a feature of human social cognition across a range of socio-ecological settings and what the causal direction of its association with intergroup hostility is. One possibility is that essentialist beliefs cause intergroup violence because they make violence on members of out-groups more palatable. An alternative hypothesis is that essentialist beliefs may develop as a response to intergroup violence. Using “switched at birth” vignettes to assess how intergenerationally inherited and fixed people’s identities are, we assessed the extent to which Turkana pastoralist warriors have essentialist beliefs about themselves and the neighboring Toposa ethnic group in South Sudan. The Turkana and Toposa engage in mutually lethal cattle raids, which account for about half of adult Turkana male mortality in our study area. We found that only four of 162 (2.5%) Turkana surveyed expressed essentialist beliefs about themselves and the Toposa, suggesting that ethnic essentialism may not be a cross-culturally widespread feature of social cognition nor a necessary ideology for engaging in intergroup hostilities. The four participants who expressed essentialist beliefs did not exhibit unusual combat-related behavior and attitudes towards the outgroup. Specifically, they were no different than non-essentialist survey respondents in their levels of combat exposure, killing of enemies in combat, witnessing morally injurious events, and moral judgments about killing Toposa. However, one of the four was an outlier in offensive raiding and killing, anecdotally suggesting that essentialism may contribute to, but be insufficient for, very prolific raiding in individual Turkana. The cultural similarity between the Toposa and Turkana, a common origin story, well-known examples of cross-group adoption and assimilation, and a tradition of cross-border friendships may explain the Turkana’s low frequency of essentialist beliefs despite widespread lethal violence.