I examine the origins of ordinary racial thinking. In doing so, I argue against the thesis that it is the byproduct of a unique module (e.g. a folk-biology module). Instead, I defend a pluralistic thesis according to which different forms of racial thinking are driven by distinct mechanisms, each with their own etiology. I begin with the belief that visible features are diagnostic of race. I argue that the mechanisms responsible for face recognition have an important, albeit delimited, role to play in sustaining this belief. I then argue that essentialist beliefs about race are driven by some of the mechanisms responsible for “entitativity perception”: the tendency to perceive some aggregates of people as more genuine groups than others. Finally, I argue that coalitional thinking about race is driven by a distinctive form of entitativity perception. However, I suggest that more data is needed to determine the prevalence of this form of racial thinking.

我研究了普通种族思想的起源。这样做时，我反对这样一个论点，即它是独特模块（例如，民间生物学模块）的副产品。取而代之的是，我捍卫了一个多元化的论点，根据该论点，不同形式的种族思维受到不同机制的驱动，每种机制都有其自己的病因。我首先相信可见特征可以诊断种族。我认为负责人脸识别的机制在维持这种信念方面起着重要的作用，尽管是有限的。然后，我认为，关于种族的本质主义信念是由某些负责“实体性感知”的机制所驱动的：一种倾向是将某些人聚集在一起比其他人更真实。最后，我认为，关于种族的联合思考是由一种独特的主体性意识驱动的。但是，我建议需要更多数据来确定这种种族思维形式的普遍性。