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. 2023 Jun;5(3):348-365.
doi: 10.1332/263169021x16841228834058.

Intuitive pathways into racist beliefs

Mehr Latif  1 , Pete Simi  2 , Kathleen Blee  3 , Matthew DeMichele  4
Affiliations

Intuitive pathways into racist beliefs

Mehr Latif et al. Emot Soc. 2023 Jun.

Abstract

In this article, we present empirical evidence on the cognitive processes underlying racist beliefs and judgement. We draw on 47 life history interviews with former members of White supremacist groups to better understand how social interactions and stimuli from the wider environment inform cognitive pathways or how people think. While we examine both deliberate and intuitive pathways to racist belief, we focus on the intuitive ways that extreme racist beliefs are cognitively processed before, during and after an individual is involved in the White supremacist movement. In doing so, we fill a critical gap in the literature by providing an empirical analysis of intuition. We illustrate the analytic contributions of our approach, and we conclude by drawing on our evidence to elucidate three puzzles, including: (1) why racist beliefs persist; (2) how people draw on implicit beliefs to make explicit judgements; and (3) how explicit beliefs become encoded in intuitive pathways.

Keywords: White supremacy; belief; intuition; racism.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of interest The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1:
Figure 1:
Analytic model
Figure 2:
Figure 2:
Intuitive and deliberate pathways
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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