Florian van Leeuwen

Disease-Avoidance Processes and Stigmatization: Cues of Substandard Health Arouse Heightened Discomfort With Physical Contact

ABSTRACT An evolutionary approach to stigmatization suggests that disease-avoidance processes contribute to some instances of social exclusion. Disease-avoidance processes are over-inclusive, targeting even non-threatening individuals who display cues of substandard health. We investigated whether such cues motivate avoidance of physical contact in particular. In Studies 1 and 2, targets with disease (e.g., leprosy) or atypical morphologies (e.g., amputated leg, obesity) were found to arouse differentially heightened discomfort with physical (versus nonphysical) contact, whereas a criminal target (stigmatized for disease-irrelevant reasons) was found to arouse elevated discomfort for both types of contact. Study 3 used a between-subjects design that eliminated the influence of extraneous factors. A diseased target was found to arouse differentially heightened discomfort with physical (versus nonphysical) contact, and to do so more strongly than any other type of target.

Safety, Threat, and Stress in Intergroup Relations: A Coalitional Index Model

Contact between people from different groups triggers specific individual- and group-level responses, ranging from attitudes and emotions to welfare and health outcomes. Standard social psychological perspectives do not yet provide an integrated, causal model of these phenomena. As an alternative, we describe a coalitional perspective. Human psychology includes evolved cognitive systems designed to garner support from other individuals, organize and maintain alliances, and measure potential support from group members. Relations between alliances are strongly influenced by threat detection mechanisms, which are sensitive to cues that express that one’s own group will provide less support or that other groups are dangerous. Repeated perceptions of such threat cues can lead to chronic stress. The model provides a parsimonious explanation for many individual-level effects of intergroup relations and group-level disparities in health and well-being. This perspective suggests new research directions aimed at understanding the psychological processes involved in intergroup relations.

Is Obesity Stigma Based on Perceptions of Appearance or Character? Theory, Evidence, and Directions for Further Study

Theoretical approaches to stigmatization have highlighted distinct psychological mechanisms underlying distinct instances of stigmatization. Some stigmas are based on inferences of substandard psychological character (e.g., individuals deemed untrustworthy), whereas others are based on perceptions of substandard physical appearance (e.g., individuals with physical deformities). These inferences and perceptions are associated with specific cognitive and motivational processes, which have implications for understanding specific instances of stigmatization. Recent theoretical approaches and empirical findings suggest that obesity stigma involves both inferences of substandard psychological character and perceptions of substandard physical appearance. We provide a review of the relevant evidence and discuss directions for future research.

Evolutionary Perspectives on Social Identity

A complete understanding of the psychology of social identity requires not only descriptions of how social identification processes work but also an account of why the underlying psychological mechanisms have evolved. This chapter focuses on the evolution of coalitional (or “tribal”) social identity (i.e., the type of social identity associated with nationality, ethnicity, religion, and class). Coalitional social identity appears to involve a readiness to incur costs for the collective, which may yield cooperative benefits. However, it has not been obvious why reaping the benefits of intragroup cooperation would be facilitated by social identification processes. We suggest that social identity may be related to the signaling of coalitional membership and cooperative intent. Specifically, we argue that social identity may constitute a self-represented summary of the loyalty-signaling characteristics that one has acquired. Based on this hypothesized ultimate function of social identity, we derive predictions regarding the proximate psychology of social identity. We suggest that further research may examine whether social identity involves private social identities (for balancing costs and benefits of group membership) and public social identities (for strategically influencing the behavior of others).

The asymmetric behavioral homeostasis hypothesis: Unidirectional flexibility of fundamental motivational processes

Natural selection has produced not only fixed adaptive traits in response to enduring environments, but also contingencies capable of yielding variable outcomes in variable environments. A well-known example is phenotypic plasticity, which entails alternative developmental outcomes in different environments. Here, we focus on more immediate and transitory behavioral plasticity (underpinned by motivational processes), and we suggest that the physiological concept of homeostasis offers a coherent perspective for studying human motivations and associated behavioral processes. We further propose the asymmetric behavioral homeostasis hypothesis, which conceptualizes many motivational processes as 1-sided homeostatic mechanisms and which predicts that motivational responses that are amplified by certain cues will not be reversed simply by reversing the input cues. An important implication is that many evolutionarily adaptive—albeit subjectively and socially deleterious—responses to fitness threats (e.g., fears, aversions) are more easily inflamed than dampened. We review literature bearing on this hypothesis and discuss implications for psychology.

Individual Choose-to-Transmit Decisions Reveal Little Preference for Transmitting Negative or High-Arousal Content

Research on social transmission suggests that people preferentially transmit information about threats and social interactions. Such biases might be driven by the arousal that is experienced as part of the emotional response triggered by information about threats or social relationships. The current studies tested whether preferences for transmitting threat-relevant information are consistent with a functional motive to recruit social support. USA residents were recruited for six online studies. Studies 1a and 1B showed that participants more often chose to transmit positive, low-arousal vignettes (rather than negative, high-arousal vignettes involving threats and social interactions). Studies 2A and 2B showed higher intentions to transmit emotional vignettes (triggering disgust, fear, anger, or sadness) to friends (rather than to strangers or disliked acquaintances). Study 4 showed a preference for transmitting stories that participants had modified and were therefore novel and unique. Studies 2A and 3 (but not Studies 2B and 4) suggest that motivations for seeking social support might influence transmission preferences. Overall, the findings are not easily accounted for by any of the major theories of social transmission. We discuss limitations of the current studies and directions for further research.

Cross-race misaggregation: Its detection, a mathematical decomposition, and Simpson's paradox

Researchers sometimes aggregate data, such as combining resident data into state-level means. Doing so can sometimes cause valid individual-level data to be invalid at the group level. We focus on cross-race misaggregation, which can occur when individual-level data are confounded with race. We discuss such misaggregation in the context of Simpson’s Paradox and identify 4 diagnostic indicators: aggregated rates that correlate strongly with the relative size of one or more subgroup(s), unequal sample sizes across subgroups, unequal rates or mean values across subgroups, and aggregated rates that do not correlate with subgroup rates. To illustrate these diagnostic indicators, we decomposed data on the prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) to confirm cross-race misaggregation in Parasite Stress U.S.A., an ostensible index of parasite prevalence known to be confounded with the proportion of African American residents per state.