In this chapter, I explore the fundamental concepts of psychological essentialism that is inductive inference, feature similarity, and the inference potential of kinds. I propose that essentialist cognition operates through induction to determine kind membership by employing similarity judgments of inclusive characteristics as a perceived Gestalt. It is argued that feature perception of exemplars as Gestalt is justified because organisms’ characteristics evolved into structured wholes. In the social domain, cultural features also tend to come in packages. The “rich inference potential” of essentialism is grounded in deductive inference derived from the knowledge of kind membership.