Comparing cognitive tests like the Duncker Candle Problem against views of racial essentialism reveals that racists lack certain problem solving skills, reports Hazlitt:
Creativity is fundamentally the ability to recombine old ideas, moving beyond preexisting categories in order to create things that are genuinely novel. And while racial essentialism has its advantages—allowing us to make quick, efficient judgments, providing patterns that help us make sense of an infinitely messy world—when it comes to problem-solving, the “rigid conceptual network of the essentialist mind-set” works against you.
