Steven Neuberg

Department of Psychology
Arizona State University

Discriminating affiliations, textured prejudices, and other implications of the human affordance management system

Friday, March 27, 2009
Engineering Building 110, 4:00 PM

Abstract

The human psyche was designed by natural selection to manage the threats and opportunities afforded by the physical and social ecologies inhabited by early humans and their ancestors. I focus here on threats and opportunities created by highly interdependent sociality, and present findings showing how the need to manage these threats and opportunities shapes affiliative preferences, creates highly textured forms of within-group stigma and intergroup prejudice, and functionally orchestrates the cognitive processing of complex social environments.

Readings

1. Neuberg, S. L., & Cottrell, C. A. (2008). Managing the threats and opportunities afforded by human sociality. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice, 12, 63-72.
2. Cottrell, C. A., Neuberg, S. L., & Li, N. P. (2007). What do people desire in others? A sociofunctional perspective on the importance of different valued characteristics. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 208-231.
3. Cottrell, C. A., & Neuberg, S. L. (2005). Different emotional reactions to different groups: A sociofunctional threat-based approach to ‘prejudice.’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88, 770-789.
4. Ackerman, J. M., Shapiro, J. R., Neuberg, S. L., Kenrick, D. T., Schaller, M., Becker, D. V., Griskevicius, V., & Maner, J. K. (2006). They all look the same to me (unless they’re angry): From out-group homogeneity to out-group heterogeneity. Psychological Science, 17, 836-840.
5. Chapter to appear in Neuberg, S. L., Kenrick, D. T., & Schaller, M. (in press). Evolutionary social psychology. In S. T. Fiske, D. Gilbert, and G. Lindzey (Eds.), Handbook of social psychology. New York: John Wiley & Sons.