Developmental evidence for a link between the inherence bias in explanation and psychological essentialism.

•The assumption that categories have deeper “essences” is pervasive.•What are the developmental origins of this essentialist assumption?•We propose that an inherence bias in children’s explanations promotes essentialism.•Three experiments provided correlational and experimental evidence for this link.•Thus, essentialist beliefs may develop partly as a byproduct of explanatory biases.