Test whether a list contains a specific value in Clojure

Question

What is the best way to test whether a list contains a given value in Clojure?

In particular, the behaviour of contains? is currently confusing me:

Answer 1

Here's a quick function out of my standard utilities that I use for this purpose:

(defn seq-contains?
  "Determine whether a sequence contains a given item"
  [sequence item]
  (if (empty? sequence)
    false
    (reduce #(or %1 %2) (map #(= %1 item) sequence))))