Toward capturing the functional and nuanced nature of social stereotypes: An affordance management approach

Neuberg, Steven L.; Williams, Keelah E. G.; Sng, Oliver; Pick, Cari M.; Neel, Rebecca; Krems, Jaimie Arona; Pirlott, Angela G.

doi:10.1016/bs.aesp.2020.04.004

Cited by 50 publications

(64 citation statements)

References 128 publications

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“…Briefly, from an affordance management approach to social perception, people aim to manage the opportunities and threats afforded them by others. To accomplish this, people often rely on others' perceptible features (e.g., sex, facial expressions), which may be heuristically associated with those opportunities and threats (McArthur & Baron, 1983;Neuberg & Cottrell, 2008;Neuberg & Schaller, 2016;Neuberg et al, 2020). Because people's fat amounts and locations might provide some-albeit imperfect-diagnostic information (e.g., reproductive potential; Lassek & Gaulin, 2018a, 2018b, social perceivers might use this information, consciously or unconsciously, to infer targets' affordance implications and, consequently, value or devalue (i.e., stigmatize) them.…”

Section: From Fat To Social Perceptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Updating Long-Held Assumptions About Fat Stigma: For Women, Body Shape Plays a Critical Role

Krems

Neuberg

2021

Social Psychological and Personality Science

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Heavier bodies—particularly female bodies—are stigmatized. Such fat stigma is pervasive, painful to experience, and may even facilitate weight gain, thereby perpetuating the weight-stigma cycle. Leveraging research on functionally distinct forms of fat (deposited on different parts of the body), we propose that body shape plays an important but largely underappreciated role in fat stigma, above and beyond fat amount. Across three samples varying in participant ethnicity (White and Black Americans) and nation (United States, India), patterns of fat stigma reveal that, as hypothesized, participants differently stigmatized equally overweight or equally obese female targets as a function of target shape, sometimes even more strongly stigmatizing targets with less rather than more body mass. Such findings suggest value in updating our understanding of fat stigma to include body shape and in querying a predominating, but often implicit, theoretical assumption that people simply view all fat as ‘bad’ (and more fat as ‘worse’).

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Section: From Fat To Social Perceptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Updating Long-Held Assumptions About Fat Stigma: For Women, Body Shape Plays a Critical Role

Krems

Neuberg

2021

Social Psychological and Personality Science

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“…However, inferring behaviors requires additional time beyond initial meetings that could leave perceivers vulnerable to exploitation or missed affiliative opportunities, necessitating individuals to rely on multimodal cues of these intentions. From an affordance management perspective, selection would have favored those capable of inferring humor styles through physical features (Neuberg et al, 2020;Zebrowitz & Montepare, 2006). Trait inferences relevant for affiliative opportunities occur through facial and bodily channels (e.g., Hu et al, 2018;Sacco & Brown, 2018), often within 50ms (Todorov et al, 2009).…”

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confidence: 99%

Covariation Between Formidability Inferences and Perceptions of Men’s Preferred Humor Styles

Brown¹

2022

Preprint

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Men’s formidability is inferred multimodally through various facial and bodily features. Such inferences frequently provide downstream perceptions of various traits and motivational states that inform subsequent affiliative decisions. Within these inferences could be an implicit understanding of men’s preferred humor styles. Across four studies, this research considered perceptions of men’s proclivity to employ each of the four humor styles through different formidability cues: upper body strength (Study 1), body muscularity (Study 2), facial width-to-height ratio (Study 3), and neck musculature (Study 4). Results indicated a relatively consistent perception of formidable features being diagnostic of men’s interest in aggressive humor. Additional findings indicate certain formidability cues connote a disinterest in self-defeating and self-enhancing humor. Facial and bodily cues finally connoted affiliative humor in different capacities. We frame findings from an evolutionary perspective based on perceptions of the various benefits and costs of different formidability features.

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“…Although stereotyping a group as fun, open-minded, and scientific might seem unambiguously positive to most people, others might disagree. Indeed, evidence suggests that the same stereotype can have difference implications for different perceivers (Cook et al, 2018;Neuberg et al, 2020). Thus, targets perceived as being fun, open-minded, and/or scientific might be considered opportunities by most social perceivers, even as they are considered threats by others.…”

Section: Limitations and Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is There Anything Good About Atheists? Exploring Positive and Negative Stereotypes of the Religious and Nonreligious

Moon

Krems

Cohen

2021

Social Psychological and Personality Science

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Negative stereotypes about atheists are widespread, robust, rooted in distrust, and linked to discrimination. Here, we examine whether social perceivers in the United States might additionally hold any positive stereotypes about atheists (and corresponding negative stereotypes of the religious). Experiments 1 ( N = 401) and 2 ( N = 398, preregistered) used methods of intuitive stereotypes (the conjunction fallacy). People tended to stereotype atheists as fun, open-minded, and scientific—even as they harbor extreme intuitive anti-atheist prejudice in Experiment 2. Experiment 3 ( N = 382) used a quasi-behavioral partner-choice paradigm, finding that most people choose atheist (vs. religious) partners in stereotype-relevant domains. Overall, results suggest that people simultaneously possess negative and also positive stereotypes about atheists, but that corresponding negative stereotypes of the religious may be even stronger. These effects are robust among the nonreligious and somewhat religious, but evidence is mixed about whether the highly religious harbor these positive stereotypes.

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Toward capturing the functional and nuanced nature of social stereotypes: An affordance management approach

Cited by 50 publications

References 128 publications

Updating Long-Held Assumptions About Fat Stigma: For Women, Body Shape Plays a Critical Role

Updating Long-Held Assumptions About Fat Stigma: For Women, Body Shape Plays a Critical Role

Covariation Between Formidability Inferences and Perceptions of Men’s Preferred Humor Styles

Is There Anything Good About Atheists? Exploring Positive and Negative Stereotypes of the Religious and Nonreligious

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