The British journal of social psychology
-
The present research investigates how people's general epistemic motives may inspire essentialist beliefs about racial groups and racism. In three studies, we focus particularly on essentialist entitativity (EE, referring to beliefs about the uniformity, informativeness, and inherent core of racial groups), probing into its relationships with epistemic need for closure (NFC) and prejudice. ⋯ Study 3 demonstrates in three different samples that EE beliefs mediate the relationship between dispositional NFC and racial prejudice. It is argued that EE beliefs about racial groups are an expression of motivated social cognition, serving people's seizing needs for quick and easy social judgment.