Matching Items (9)
Filtering by
- All Subjects: evolutionary psychology
- All Subjects: Impression Formation
- All Subjects: person perception
- Creators: Neuberg, Steven L.
- Resource Type: Text
- Status: Published
Description
The current research seeks to examine whether individuals display or downplay intelligence in various mating contexts. I hypothesized that both men and women should display fluid intelligence when attempting to attract a potential long-term partner, and that only men should display fluid intelligence when attempting to attract a potential short-term partner. Contrary to predictions, I find that men perform worse at a fluid intelligence test when motivated to attract a long-term partner. With respect to crystallized intelligence, I predicted that both men and women should display crystallized intelligence when attempting to attract a potential long-term partner, but women should downplay crystallized intelligence when attempting to attract a potential short-term partner. However, there were no effects of mating contexts on displays of crystallized intelligence.
ContributorsSng, Wei Sheng Oliver (Author) / Neuberg, Steven L. (Thesis advisor) / Kenrick, Douglas T. (Committee member) / Shiota, Michelle (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Life History Theory suggests that, in order to maximize reproductive fitness, individuals make trade-offs between allocating resources to mating and parenting. These trade-offs are influenced by an individual's sex, life history strategy, and environment. Here, I explored the usefulness of a Life History Theory framework for understanding endorsement of child support laws. This study experimentally manipulated sex ratio, and gathered information about participants' endorsement of child support, sexual restrictedness, and mate value. As predicted, women endorsed child support more than men, whereas men favored greater restriction of child support in the form of required paternity testing. However, in general, results do not support an effect of sex ratio, sexual restrictedness, or mate value on endorsement of child support. Results suggest sensitivity to exploitation in a male-biased sex ratio, reflected by an increase in men's endorsement of paternity testing requirements under a male-biased sex ratio prime. Women, on the other hand, report especially unfavorable beliefs toward paternity testing in a male-biased sex ratio. Although results of the current study are mixed, there remains much to be gained from applying an evolutionary perspective to understanding variability in endorsement of child support.
ContributorsWilliams, Keelah (Author) / Neuberg, Steven L. (Thesis advisor) / Saks, Michael (Committee member) / Kenrick, Douglas (Committee member) / Ellman, Ira (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Pro-environmental goals often pit immediate self-interest against future communal interest. Consequently, the motivation to behave in pro-environmental ways can be particularly difficult to maintain over time. By framing environmental ills as threats to one's chronic concerns, I suggest that chronic motivations, such as disease avoidance, can be leveraged to engender longer-lasting pro-environmental motivation. Specifically, I suggest that three distinct categories of environmental ills should be associated with distinct chronic concerns, and that the mechanisms that regulate these concerns should also regulate reactions to related environmental ills: pollution should engage a pathogenic disgust mechanism, wastefulness a moral disgust mechanism, and framing environmental outcomes as posing safety concerns should be linked to fear and anger mechanisms. Results of four experiments did not lend consistent support to the hypotheses. Neither situationally primed concerns nor motivation-relevant individual differences produced consistent results suggesting an association between the proposed motivations and the relevant environmental outcomes.
ContributorsBerlin, Joy (Author) / Neuberg, Steven L. (Thesis advisor) / Kenrick, Douglas T. (Committee member) / Ledlow, Susan E (Committee member) / Shiota, Michelle N. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Men may engage in financially risky behaviors when seeking mates for several reasons: Risky behaviors can signal to potential mates one's genetic fitness, may facilitate success in status competition with other men, and may be a necessary strategy for gaining sufficient resources to offer potential mates. Once in a relationship, however, the same financial riskiness may be problematic for males, potentially suggesting to partners an interest in (extra-curricular) mate-seeking and placing in jeopardy existing resources available to the partner and the relationship. In the current research, we employed guided visualization scenarios to activate either a mating motivation or no motivation in single and in attached men and women. Participants indicated their preference for either guaranteed sums of money or chances of getting significantly more money accompanied by chances of getting nothing. As predicted, mating motivation led single men to become more risky and attached men to become less risky. These findings replicated across different samples and measures. Interestingly, in all three studies, women exhibited the opposite pattern: Mating motivation led single women to become less financially risky and attached women to become more risky. Thus, two additional experiments were conducted to explore the potential causes of this effect. The results of these latter experiments support the "mate-switching" hypothesis of risk-taking in attached women. That is, women who are able (i.e. have high mate value) were more risky in order to exit an undesirable relationship and move into a better one.
ContributorsLi, Yexin Jessica (Author) / Kenrick, Douglas T. (Thesis advisor) / Neuberg, Steven L. (Thesis advisor) / Cohen, Adam B. (Committee member) / Ledlow, Susan (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Friendships make us happy, keep us healthy, and can even facilitate our reproductive fitness. But most friendships are not forever—even when we want them to be. How do people maintain valued friendships? I propose that “friendship jealousy” arises when people perceive others as posing threats to valued friendships, and that this response can function to prevent friendship loss and friend defection. In preliminary experiments, I tested predictions derived from this functional view. As predicted, I found, first, that friendship jealousy is calibrated to friend value. Second, friendship jealousy predicts intentions to “friend guard” (i.e., engage in behavior to protect the friendship). Third, friendship jealousy has sex-differentiated features, which are consistent with sex differences in friendship structures and ancestral friendship functions. The present work pits against one another intuitive and functional predictions as to what drives friendship jealousy. Although intuition might lead one to expect greater jealousy when a friend spends more time with a new person, a functional view suggests greater jealousy when that new person threatens to fulfill the same function for one’s friend that one is currently fulfilling (i.e., to “replace” him/her). Preliminary studies revealed that greater friendship jealousy is evoked when friends form new same-sex friendships (which presumably pose greater replacement threat, but lesser time threat) versus new romantic relationships (which presumably pose lesser replacement threat, but greater time threat). The focal experiment explicitly and experimentally manipulates a version of “replacement threat” (whether the best friend “chooses” the new friend over you) and “time threat” (how much time the best friend spends with the new friend). In line with functional predictions, the amount of time the best friend spends with a new friend drives friendship jealousy—but only when direct information about replacement threat is unavailable. Regardless of the time threat posed, participants report high friendship jealousy when replacement threat is high, and low friendship jealousy when replacement threat is low. Results imply that friendship jealousy is calibrated to replacement threat (over time threat). Overall, findings suggest that friendship jealousy might be a functional response aimed at facilitating friendship maintenance.
ContributorsKrems, Jaimie Arona (Author) / Kenrick, Douglas T. (Thesis advisor) / Neuberg, Steven L. (Thesis advisor) / Aktipis, Athena (Committee member) / Ha, Phuong Thao (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
In an affordance management approach, stereotypes, prejudices, and discrimination are conceptualized as tools to manage the potential opportunities and threats afforded by others in highly interdependent social living. This approach suggests a distinction between two “kinds” of stereotypes. “Base” stereotypes are relatively factual, stable beliefs about the capacities and inclinations of groups and their members, whereas “affordance stereotypes” are beliefs about potential threats and opportunities posed by groups and their members. Two experiments test the hypothesized implications of this distinction: (1) People may hold identical base stereotypes about a target group but hold very different affordance stereotypes. (2) Affordance stereotypes, but not base stereotypes, are shaped by perceiver goals and felt vulnerabilities. (3) Prejudices and (4) discrimination are more heavily influenced by affordance stereotypes than by base stereotypes. I endeavored to manipulate participants’ felt vulnerabilities to measure the predicted corresponding shifts in affordance (but not base) stereotype endorsement, prejudices, and discriminatory inclinations toward a novel target group (Sidanians). In Study 1 (N = 600), the manipulation was unsuccessful. In Study 2 (N = 338), the manipulation had a partial effect, allowing for preliminary causal tests of the proposed model. In both studies, I predicted and found high endorsement of the base stereotypes that Sidanians try to share their values and actively participate in the community, with low variability. I also predicted and found more variation in affordance (vs. base) stereotype endorsement, which was systematically related to participants’ felt vulnerabilities in Study 2. Taken together, these findings support my hypothesized distinction between base stereotypes and affordance stereotypes. Finally, I modeled the proposed correlational relationships between felt vulnerabilities, base stereotypes, affordance stereotypes, prejudices, and discriminatory inclinations in the model. Although these relationships were predominantly significant in the predicted directions, overall fit of the model was poor. These studies further our critical understanding of the relationship between stereotypes, prejudices, and discrimination. This has implications for how we devise interventions to reduce the deleterious effects of such processes on their targets, perhaps focusing on changing perceiver vulnerabilities and perceived affordance (rather than base) stereotypes to more effectively reduce prejudices and discrimination.
ContributorsPick, Cari Marie (Author) / Neuberg, Steven L. (Thesis advisor) / Kenrick, Douglas T. (Committee member) / Martin, Carol L (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
The current study looked at weight stereotype presence and whether certain types of medical professionals held this bias over others. This study also investigated if there was a relation between medical professionals' self-esteem and the presence of the weight stereotype. By having a sample consisting of registered nurses, physician assistants, and medical doctors data was then collected within each group to analyze for any significant differences between the three levels of medical professionals. Eleven participants were guided through participation in the Harvard Implicit Association Test, specifically testing for weight stereotype presence, followed by responses to 50 true/false statements on the Sorensen Self-Esteem Test to measure the self-esteem of each participant. The participants within this study were 11 medical professionals, between the ages of 25 and 59, with 6 women and 5 men. The resulting sample consisted of 6 registered nurses, 3 physician assistants, and 2 medical doctors all currently practicing medicine in the state of Arizona, with the exception of 1 participant who is practicing in Colorado. This study was conducted through Qualtrics, an online database through Arizona State University. Upon completion of the study, 3 different tests were run using the data collected. The first was a between-subjects effect test to determine if there was a difference in stereotype presence among the three levels of medical professionals. The second test was a correlation between stereotype presence and the self-esteem each medical professional displayed. The third was a between-subjects effect test looking at self-esteem differences among the three levels of medical professionals. None of the tests yielded significant results, suggesting that there is no difference in weight stereotype presence or self-esteem among the three groups of medical professionals. The data also suggests that there is no correlation between a medical professionals' self-esteem and weight stereotype presence. Suggestions for future research within this paper have discussed ways to improve the current study in order to create significant results.
ContributorsFisher, Bobbi Paige (Author) / Lewis, Stephen (Thesis director) / Edwards, Alison (Committee member) / School of Social and Behavioral Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05
Description
Why do social perceivers use race to infer a target's propensity for criminal behavior and likelihood of re-offense? Life history theory proposes that the harshness and unpredictability of one's environment shapes individuals' behavior, with harsh and unpredictable ("desperate") ecologies inducing "fast" life history strategies (characterized by present-focused behaviors), and resource-sufficient and stable ("hopeful") ecologies inducing "slow" life history strategies (characterized by future-focused behaviors). Social perceivers have an implicit understanding of the ways in which ecology shapes behavior, and use cues to ecology to infer a target's likely life history strategy. Additionally, because race is confounded with ecology in the United States, American perceivers use race as a heuristic cue to ecology, stereotyping Black individuals as possessing faster life history strategies than White individuals. In the current project, I proposed that many race stereotypes about propensity for criminality and recidivism actually reflect inferences of life history strategy, and thus track beliefs about the behavioral effects of ecology, rather than race. In a series of three studies, I explored the relationship between ecology, race, and perceptions of criminal behavior. Participants in each experiment were recruited through an online marketplace. Findings indicated that (1) stereotypes regarding likelihood to engage in specific crimes were largely driven by beliefs about the presumed ecology of the offender, rather than the offender's race, such that Black and White targets from desperate (and hopeful) ecologies were stereotyped as similarly likely (or unlikely) to commit a variety of crimes; (2) lay beliefs about recidivism predictors likewise reflected inferences of life history strategy, and thus also tracked ecology rather than race; (3) when evaluating whether to release a specific offender on parole, participants placed greater importance on ecology information as compared to race information in a point allocation task, and prioritized ecology information over race information in a ranking task. Taken together, these findings suggest that beliefs about criminality and recidivism may not be driven by race, per se, but instead reflect inferences of how one's ecology shapes behavior. Implications of these findings for understanding and reducing racial bias in the criminal justice system are discussed.
ContributorsWilliams, Keelah (Author) / Neuberg, Steven L. (Thesis advisor) / Saks, Michael J. (Thesis advisor) / Becker, David V (Committee member) / Kenrick, Douglas T. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
Description
Humans are highly interdependent, living and working in close proximity with many others. From an affordance management perspective, the goal of social perception is to assess and manage potential opportunities and threats afforded by these close others. Social perceivers are thus often motivated to assess particular affordance-relevant characteristics in a target. Frequently, perceivers assess these characteristics via passive observation. Sometimes, however, making such an assessment via observation can be difficult. In these cases, perceivers may instead “affordance test”: actively manipulate the target’s circumstances to reveal (or notably not reveal) cues to the characteristic of interest. There are multiple factors hypothesized to affect whether a perceiver is more likely to passively observe or affordance test that characteristic, including factors related to the characteristic of interest, the situation, the perceiver, and the target. Here, four core hypotheses of this affordance testing framework are tested. In a Preliminary Study (analyzed N = 1301), Study 1 (analyzed N = 559), and Study 2 (analyzed N = 572), highly consistent correlational and experimental evidence was found in support of Hypothesis 1, that the less observable a characteristic is believed to be, the more likely a perceiver is to assess it via affordance testing. In the Preliminary Study, evidence supported Hypothesis 2, that the more important a characteristic is believed to be, the more likely it is to be affordance tested. In Studies 1 and 2, mixed evidence supported Hypothesis 3, that the more urgency or time pressure a perceiver feels, the more likely they are to assess the characteristic of interest via affordance testing. And in Studies 1 and 2, evidence did not support Hypothesis 4, that believed observability and felt urgency interact, such that even characteristics of moderate believed observability are highly likely to be affordance tested under higher felt urgency. Implications of these findings for the affordance testing framework, limitations of the studies, and potential future directions are discussed. In sum, the present work provides promising initial progress in understanding foundational factors that affect when perceivers are likely to affordance test—an important, yet previously understudied, component of the social information-seeking process.
ContributorsPick, Cari Marie (Author) / Neuberg, Steven L. (Thesis advisor) / Kenrick, Douglas T. (Committee member) / West, Stephen G. (Committee member) / Funder, David C. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021