Deeper than Belief: Intuitive Judgment as a Context-Driven Process

Based on " laws" of contagion and similarity, it is understood that people tend to believe that meanings associated with one object may be transferred onto anothe r, and the meanings of the first may " contaminate" the secon d. The perceived contamination may influence the individual's way of interacting with the objec t. We aimed to produce a rich description of individual differences that predict intuitive judgments in response to scenarios involving activation of contagion heuristic s. Adolescents and adults in Germany completed a survey and provided rated responses to hypothetical scenario s. They also gave open-ended remarks on one scenario: whether they would wear a sweater that had belonged to Adolf Hitler if they were col d. Content analysis produced a composite description of reflections with insights into historical consciousness in contemporary Germany. Also examined was the extent to which quantitative responses were related to demographic s, personality characteristic s, supernatural belief s, and responses to other scenario s.