Intuitive pathways into racist beliefs

Argumentation and the diffusion of counter-intuitive beliefs.

Research in cultural evolution has focused on the spread of intuitive or minimally counterintuitive beliefs. However, some very counterintuitive beliefs can also spread successfully, at least in some communities-scientific theories being the most prominent example. We suggest that argumentation could be an important factor in the spread of some very counterintuitive beliefs. A first experiment ...

Racist Value Judgments as Objectively False Beliefs: A Philosophical and Social-Psychological Analysis

We argue that racist value judgments express beliefs that are objectively false. In our view, racist value judgments have cognitive or descriptive content that is empirically inaccurate and this inaccuracy is, in principle, available to objective, rational assessment. Our position responds to a popular view that, while some value judgments, such as racist judgments, might be abhorrent, values g...

Attributing Harm to Racist Speech

The racist patient.

TO THE EDITOR: Twenty-five years ago, I faced a situation similar to Jain’s (1). My experience involved a horrid anti-Semite; I was raised with Holocaust survivors. I finally asked my attending to be reassigned. He said that I was a physician and must fulfill my responsibilities to my patient regardless of who and what he was. My personal feelings were immaterial. My attending was right. Jain’s...

Intuitive Interaction: Tapping into body skills to find rich and intuitive interaction methods for Virtual Reality

Intuitive interaction is strongly rooted in embodied skills. We propose to take a human-centered approach to explore potential intuitive interfaces and interaction metaphors that also offer a rich interaction experience. Here, human-centered denotes the systematic exploration of the full body, i.e. all human senses and all control option people have in daily life. We describe a highly intuitive...