William von Hippel

The social outcast: Ostracism, social exclusion, rejection, and bullying.

The Social Outcast: Introduction, Kipling D. Williams, Joseph P. Forgas, William von Hippel & Lisa Zadro. Part I. Theoretical Foundations. Ostracism: The Indiscriminate Early Detection System, Kipling D. Williams & Lisa Zadro. Varieties of Interpersonal Rejection. Mark R. Leary. The Inner Dimension of Social Exclusion: Intelligent Thought and Self-Regulation Among Rejected Persons, Roy F. Baumeister and C. Nathan DeWall. Part II. Deep Roots of Exclusion: Neuropsychological substrates of Isolation and Exclusion. Adding Insult to Injury: Social Pain Theory and Response to Social Exclusion, Geoff MacDonald, Rachell Kingsbury, and Stephanie Shaw. People Thinking about People: The Vicious Cycle of Being a Social Outcast in Ones Own Mind, John T. Cacioppo and Louise C. Hawkley. Why it Hurts to Be Left Out: The Neurocognitive Overlap between Physical and Social Pain, Naomi I. Eisenberger & Matthew D. Lieberman. Part III: Individual and Population Differences and the Impact of Social Exclusion and Bullying. Rejection Sensitivity as a Predictor of Affective and Behavioral Responses to Interpersonal Stress: A Defensive Motivational System, Rainer Romero-Canyas and Geraldine Downey. The Rejected and the Bullied: Lessons about Social Misfits from Developmental Psychology, Jaana Juvonen and Elisheva F. Gross. Role of Social Expectancies in Cognitive and Behavioral Responses to Social Rejection, Kristin L. Sommer and Yonata Rubin. Coping with Rejection: Core Social Motives, across Cultures, Susan T. Fiske and Mariko Yamamoto. Part IV: Influences of Rejection on Emotion, Perception, and Cognition. When Does Social Rejection Lead to Aggression? Jean M. Twenge. The Social Monitoring System: Enhanced Sensitivity to Social Cues and Information as an Adaptive Response to Social Exclusion and Belonging Need, Cynthia L. Pickett & Wendi L. Gardner. Social Snacking and Shielding: Using Social Symbols, Selves, and Surrogates in the Service of Belonging Needs, Wendi L. Gardner, Cynthia L. Pickett, and Megan Knowles. All Animals are Equal but some Animals are more Equal than Others: Social Identity and Marginal Membership, Michael A. Hogg. Bye Bye, Black Sheep: The Causes and Consequences of Rejection in Family Relationships, Julie Fitness. Part V: Effects of Social Exclusion on Pro- and Anti-Social Behavior. Exclusion and Nonconscious Behavioral Mimicry, Jessica L. Lakin and Tanya L. Chartrand. The Effect of Rejection on Anti-Social Behaviors: Social Exclusion Produces Aggressive Behaviors, Kathleen R. Catanese and Dianne M. Tice. Rejection and Entitativity: A Synergistic Model of Mass Violence, Lowell Gaertner and Jonathan Iuzzini. Avoiding the Social Death Penalty: Ostracism and Cooperation in Social Dilemmas, Jaap W. Ouwerkerk, Norbert L. Kerr, Marcello Gallucci, and Paul A. M. Van Lange.

The evolution and psychology of self-deception

In this article we argue that self-deception evolved to facilitate interpersonal deception by allowing people to avoid the cues to conscious deception that might reveal deceptive intent. Self-deception has two additional advantages: It eliminates the costly cognitive load that is typically associated with deceiving, and it can minimize retribution if the deception is discovered. Beyond its role in specific acts of deception, self-deceptive self-enhancement also allows people to display more confidence than is warranted, which has a host of social advantages. The question then arises of how the self can be both deceiver and deceived. We propose that this is achieved through dissociations of mental processes, including conscious versus unconscious memories, conscious versus unconscious attitudes, and automatic versus controlled processes. Given the variety of methods for deceiving others, it should come as no surprise that self-deception manifests itself in a number of different psychological processes, and we discuss various types of self-deception. We then discuss the interpersonal versus intrapersonal nature of self-deception before considering the levels of consciousness at which the self can be deceived. Finally, we contrast our evolutionary approach to self-deception with current theories and debates in psychology and consider some of the costs associated with self-deception.

Mapping cognitive structures and processes through verbal content: the thought-listing technique.

Open-ended cognitive assessment techniques have helped illuminate the cognitive structures and processes underlying various clinical problems. The authors review a specific open-ended protocol analysis for assessing cognitive structures and processes--the thought-listing technique. They begin with a brief description of this technique and its validity, limitations, and potential clinical use. They then review representative research using the thought-listing technique in studies of psychopathology and psychotherapy. They conclude with a discussion of new and potentially useful methods (e.g., adjusted ratio of clustering scores, multidimensional scaling, implicit memory measures) for mapping cognitive representations and coping processes on the basis of data from thought listings in clinical and counseling psychology.

Stereotyping Against Your Will: The Role of Inhibitory Ability in Stereotyping and Prejudice among the Elderly

An experiment examined the hypothesis that elderly people rely on stereotypes more, and are more prejudiced, than younger people because of deficits in the ability to inhibit information. Consistent with predictions, elderly people relied on stereotypes even when instructed not to, whereas young people did not. Elderly people also were more prejudiced than young people, and these differences in stereotyping and prejudice were mediated by age differences in inhibitory ability. Because elderly people reported a stronger desire than young people to control their prejudiced reactions, these results suggest that inhibitory failure can cause people to become more prejudiced than they want to be.

On The Role Of Encoding Processes In Stereotype Maintenance

Publisher Summary The chapter explores the impact that stereotypes have on encoding processes and the role that encoding processes play on stereotype maintenance. The goal of this chapter is to show that across a wide variety of experimental contexts, stereotypes, expectancies, and social schemas play a critical role in encoding. The chapter attempts to highlight research that clearly implicates encoding processes in judgmental and memorial effects. The chapter presents the perceptual processes that are critical at the front end of any encoding operation. The chapter discusses research on the roles played by stereotypes and schemas in perceptual encoding processes, and the way these processes can strengthen the original stereotypes. Various conceptual encoding processes—including elaborative processes, attributional processes, contrast and assimilative processes, attentional processes, and automatic versus controlled processes are discussed. The research on these issues focuses on the ways that these processes influence the conceptual encoding of information and thereby, contribute to a stereotypic view of the world. The chapter examines how the perspective concerning stereotyping and encoding might change the way prejudice and its relationship to stereotypes is viewed. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the way our perspective might lead to new hypotheses and methodologies.

Interacting with sexist men triggers social identity threat among female engineers

Social identity threat is the notion that one of a persons many social identities may be at risk of being devalued in a particular context (C. M. Steele, S. J. Spencer, & J. Aronson, 2002). The authors suggest that in domains in which women are already negatively stereotyped, interacting with a sexist man can trigger social identity threat, undermining womens performance. In Study 1, male engineering students who scored highly on a subtle measure of sexism behaved in a dominant and sexually interested way toward an ostensible female classmate. In Studies 2 and 3, female engineering students who interacted with such sexist men, or with confederates trained to behave in the same way, performed worse on an engineering test than did women who interacted with nonsexist men. Study 4 replicated this finding and showed that womens underperformance did not extend to an English test, an area in which women are not negatively stereotyped. Study 5 showed that interacting with sexist men leads women to suppress concerns about gender stereotypes, an established mechanism of stereotype threat. Discussion addresses implications for social identity threat and for womens performance in school and at work.

Hearts and Minds: The Priority of Affective Versus Cognitive Factors in Person Perception

In two experiments, affect-based and cognition-based attitudes towardaperson wereinduced by varyingthesequenceofaffective and cognitive information presented to subjects while holding the content of these communications constant. In Experiment 1, affective and cognitive persuasive appeals were created by means of a similar order manipulation, whereas in Experiment 2, affective and cognitive persuasive appeals were induced through a focus manipulation. Results indicated that affect-based attitudes were most effectively changed by affective persuasive appeals, whether these appeals were produced by an order manipulation or a focus manipulation. Affect-based attitudes also tended to be expressed with greater confidence than cognition-based attitudes.

Evolution and the social mind : evolutionary psychology and social cognition

Part I. Introduction and Foundations. von Hippel, Haselton, Forgas, Evolutionary Psychology and Social Thinking: History, Issues, and Prospects. Dunbar, The Social Brain Hypothesis and Its Relevance to Social Psychology. Gangestad, Thornhill, The Evolution of Social Inference Processes: The Importance of Signaling Theory. Kenrick, Delton, Robertson, Vaughn Becker, Neuberg, How the Mind Warps: A Social Evolutionary Perspective on Cognitive Processing Disjunctions. Part II. The Evolutionary Psychology of Affect and Cognition. Ellsworth, Appraisals, Emotions, and Adaptation. Buck, The Evolutionary Bases of Social and Moral Emotions: Dominance, Submission, and True Love. Forgas, The Strange Cognitive Benefits of Mild Dysphoria: On the Evolutionary Advantages of Not Being Too Happy. Badcock, Allen, Evolution, Social Cognition, and Depressed Mood: Exploring the Relationship between Depression and Social Risk-taking. Part III. The Evolutionary Psychology of Mate Selection. Todd, Coevolved Cognitive Mechanisms in Mate Search: Making Decisions in a Decision-shaped World. Simpson, LaPaglia, An Evolutionary Account of Strategic Pluralism in Human Mating: Changes in Mate Preferences across the Ovulatory Cycle. Lieberman, Aligning Evolutionary Psychology and Social Cognition: Inbreeding Avoidance as an Example of Investigations into Categorization, Decision Rules, and Emotions. Fletcher, Overall, The Self in Intimate Relationships: A Social Evolutionary Account. Part IV. The Evolutionary Psychology of Interpersonal Processes. Buunk, Massar, Dijkstra, A Social Cognitive Evolutionary Approach to Jealousy: The Automatic Evaluation of Ones Romantic Rivals. Van Vugt, Kurzban, Cognitive and Social Adaptations for Leadership and Followership: Evolutionary Game Theory and Group Dynamics. Halberstadt, Proximate and Ultimate Origins of a Bias for Prototypical Faces: An Evolutionary Social Cognitive Account. Ybarra, Keller, Chan, Baron, Hutsler, Garcia, Sanchez-Burks, Rios Morrison, The Social Prediction Dynamic: A Legacy of Cognition and Mixed Motives. Spoor, Williams, The Evolution of an Ostracism Detection System. Schaller, Duncan, The Behavioral Immune System.

Stereotypic explanatory bias: Implicit stereotyping as a predictor of discrimination

Abstract Two experiments examined whether a measure of implicit stereotyping based on the tendency to explain Black stereotype-incongruent events more often than Black stereotype-congruent events (Stereotypic Explanatory Bias or SEB) is predictive of behavior toward a partner in an interracial interaction. In Experiment 1 SEB predicted White males’ choice to ask stereotypic questions of a Black female (but not a White male or White female) in an interview. In Experiment 2 the type of explanation (internal or external attribution) made for stereotype-inconsistency was examined. Results showed that White participants who made internal attributions for Black stereotype-incongruent behavior were rated more positively and those who made external attributions were rated more negatively by a Black male confederate. These results point to the potential of implicit stereotyping as an important predictor of behavior in an interracial interaction.

“That Is Bloody Revolting!” Inhibitory Control of Thoughts Better Left Unsaid

An experiment explored the hypothesis that inhibitory ability helps people stop themselves from engaging in socially inappropriate behavior. All participants completed a Stroop color-naming task, after which half of the participants were asked to remember an eight-digit number (inducing divided attention). Participants were then offered an unfamiliar and visually unappetizing food product (a chicken foot) under conditions of either low or high social pressure to pretend that it was appealing. Participants who had full attention available and were under pressure to pretend the food was appealing were least likely to emit a negative response, and performance on the Stroop task predicted the degree to which they successfully restrained negative responses. These results suggest that the cognitive ability to inhibit unwanted information facilitates socially appropriate behavior.