An Affordance Management Approach☆

CHAPTER FIVE

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

Steven L. Neuberga,∗, Keelah E.G. Williamsb, Oliver Sngc, Cari M. Picka, Rebecca Neeld, Jaimie Arona Kremse, Angela G. Pirlottf aArizona State University, Tempe, AZ, United States bHamilton College, Clinton, NY, United States cUniversity of California, Irvine, CA, United States dUniversity of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada eOklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK, United States fSaint Xavier University, Chicago, IL, United States ∗ Corresponding author: e-mail address: [email protected]

Contents 1. The mind’s job: Affordance management 248 2. Stereotyping and stereotypes as affordance management tools 250 3. Sex-by-age stereotyping and stereotypes 252 3.1 Sex-by-age (not sex and age) stereotyping 252 3.2 Beyond between-group stereotypes about general characteristics: “Within-group” and “directed” stereotypes 256 4. Ecology and race stereotyping and stereotypes 260 5. Size-by-shape stereotyping and stereotypes 266 6. From stereotypes to prejudices and discrimination 272 6.1 From specific threats to specific prejudices and discriminatory inclinations 272 6.2 Base versus affordance stereotypes, and their implications for prejudices and discrimination 274 7. The stigma of “invisibility” 280 7.1 Relevance appraisals: Perceived opportunity and threat as separate dimensions 281 7.2 From perceived irrelevance to invisibility stigma 282

☆ The writing of this chapter was supported by funding to Steven Neuberg from the Arizona State University Foundation for a New American University.

8. Other implications 284 8.1 Stereotype accuracy? 284 8.2 The psychology of those targeted by stereotypes and stigma 286 9. Summary and conclusions 289 References 296

Abstract The affordance-management approach conceptualizes stereotyping, stereotype content, prejudices, and discriminatory inclinations as interlinked cognitive, affective, and behavioral tools used to manage the social opportunities and threats afforded by other people. Presenting research from our labs, we show how the affordance management approach enhances understanding of why people are especially likely to categorize others using certain features (rather than alternative features), what the specific contents of our stereotypes are likely to be (and why this content is more nuanced than typically revealed by existing research), and how and why these stereotypes elicit similarly nuanced and functionally-linked prejudices and discrimination. We focus this discussion of stereotypes and stereotyping on the features of sex, age, home ecology, race, sexual orientation, and body size/shape, and we present novel concepts such as “directed” and “within-group” stereotypes. Then, elaborating on the specific, functional links between stereotypes and prejudices/discrimination, we present a novel distinction between “base” and “affordance” stereotypes, and we highlight the implications of the framework for better understanding sexual prejudices and “invisibility” stigma. We then briefly discuss the implications of our approach for stereotype accuracy and the psychology of those targeted by stereotypes, stereotyping, prejudices, and discrimination. In all, the affordance management approach to stereotyping and stereotypes generates a large number of novel predictions and findings, some of which pose significant challenges to popular traditional approaches to stereotype content, stereotyping, and prejudice.

Stereotyping and stereotypes are typically viewed as being “bad.” Stereotyping is viewed as bad because it is an act of mental laziness—an attempt to understand others merely as members of groups without having to do the real work required to learn about others as individuals. Stereotypes are viewed as bad because they are overly simple generalizations about groups, and because their use to understand individuals fails to provide accurate assessments of those individuals’ true characteristics. Stereotyping and stereotypes are viewed as bad because they provide social perceivers with the illusion of actually understanding those they perceive. Indeed, stereotyping and stereotypes can lead perceivers astray and produce quite negative and undesirable effects on those stereotyped. We suggest, however, that the above characterizations fail to capture the true essence of stereotyping and stereotypes, and why they are such important An affordance management approach to social stereotypes 247 and ubiquitous aspects of human psychology. In this chapter, we review theory and research from our labs suggesting that (1) stereotyping and stereotypes likely exist not to enable mental laziness but rather to enable people to better understand and predict others’ behaviors given the information available, (2) stereotypes are not simple but rather frequently quite complex and nuanced (and predictably so), and (3) certain kinds of stereotypes indeed may facilitate more accurate social perception. Our affordance-management approach starts with the foundational premise that the mind’s “job” is to identify and then manage the opportunities and threats in the physical and social environment. This is a functional approach; in this vein, stereotypes and stereotyping—and downstream prejudices and behavioral discrimination—are conceptualized as interlinked cognitive, affective, and behavioral tools used to accomplish these tasks. The affordance management approach generates many novel predictions and findings, some of which pose significant challenges to popular traditional approaches to stereotype content, stereotyping, and prejudice. We begin by introducing the broad framework of affordance management, and then situate the conceptualization of stereotypes, stereotyping, prejudices, and discrimination within it. Presenting research from our labs, we then show implications of this approach for understanding why people are especially likely to categorize others using certain features (rather than alternatives), what the specific content of our stereotypes are likely to be (and why this content is more nuanced than typically revealed by existing research), and how and why these stereotypes elicit similarly nuanced and functionally-linked prejudices and forms of discrimination. We focus our discussion of stereotypes and stereotyping on the features of sex, age, home ecology, race, sexual orientation, and body size/shape, and we present novel concepts such as “directed” and “within-group” stereotypes. We then elab- orate on the specific, functional links between stereotypes, on one hand, and prejudices (plural) and discrimination, on the other. Within this section, we explore the functional implications of specific stereotypes for specific prejudices and forms of discrimination, highlighting the implications of our framework for better understanding the nuanced nature of sexual prejudices; we present what we see as a valuable distinction between “base” and “affordance” stereotypes for better understanding prejudices and discrimination; and we articulate the implications of an affordance-management approach for “invisibility” stigma. We then briefly discuss the implications of our approach for better understanding the psychology and behaviors of those targeted by stereotypes, stereotyping, prejudices, and discrimination, and we address broader issues, including stereotype accuracy. 248 Steven L. Neuberg et al.

1. The mind’s job: Affordance management Humans evolved to be highly interdependent, cooperative animals (Brewer, 1999; Campbell, 1982; Richerson & Boyd, 1995). The human form of sociality provides special, critical opportunities for achieving important, fundamental goals (e.g., acquiring resources, protecting oneself from predators, raising offspring). It also, however, poses potential threats to the achievement of many of these same goals. Whereas two neighbors may coordinate to capture a wild boar, a third may steal the bacon when backs are turned; whereas a neighbor may cooperate to help raise another’s child during the day, that same neighbor may attempt to poach another’s mate that same night. Any individual’s success thus greatly depends on the actions of others. One implication of this is that we need to manage others in ways that facilitate rather than hinder our goal progress: We need to anticipate others’ actions, assess the implications of these likely actions for us, and generate behaviors to increase potential opportunities and decrease potential threats. Affordance management systems are suites of psychological mechanisms designed to do just this—to identify the opportunities and threats potentially posed by others and then to generate behavior maximizing these opportunities and minimizing these threats (Gibson, 1979; McArthur & Baron, 1983; Neuberg, Kenrick, & Schaller, 2010; Neuberg, Kenrick, & Schaller, 2011; Zebrowitz & Montepare, 2006). Several introductory points are important: First, identifying potential threats and opportunities is challenging, especially when encountering unfamiliar individuals. Only rarely can we directly perceive others’ goals, intentions, or even capacities. It is also difficult to anticipate others’ likely strategies, given that multiple strategies frequently exist to accomplish most goals. Given this difficulty, social perceivers must infer others’ opportunity and threat affordances from perceptually salient behaviors or characteristics heuristically linked to others’ actual goals, strategies, and capacities. From a facial scowl we are likely to infer anger and an inclination to aggress, whereas from a smile we are likely to infer agreeable interest and an inclination to befriend; from large muscle mass we are likely to infer the capacity to inflict physical harm, whereas from a skinny build we are likely to infer a more limited capacity. Yet even cues proximate to the behaviors one is trying to predict—as with the proximity that often exists between facial expressions and emotion-driven action—can leave much to be desired, given that they An affordance management approach to social stereotypes 249 can often be effectively disguised or fabricated by those motivated to manage our behavior. After all, the smiling man may be preparing to swindle us. There is thus value in the social perceiver focusing on cues that are readily perceived and relatively invariant across time and locations—and thus potentially difficult to disguise or fake—as long as these cues are (at least somewhat) diagnostic of the behavior one hopes to predict. Even better would be to focus on those relatively invariant cues linked to complexes of diagnostic information, thereby potentially providing much useful information for little effort. For example, and as we see below, physical features linked to a person’s sex and life stage (age) possess such usefulness as cues: Not only are they perceptually salient and relatively difficult to fake, but they also possess nontrivial levels of diagnosticity, given that people’s sex and life stage actually do shape their behavior and thus the opportunity and threat affordances they pose for others. Second, the process of identifying the opportunities and threats others potentially afford often needs to happen quickly; we frequently need to arrive at “accurate enough” inferences with little information and little time to gather more. This does not mean, however, that the affordance management system is designed to arrive at just any inference. Rather, the system is driven first to make accurate inferences, but then may compromise its inher- ent goal of accuracy when time and available information are sparse. That is, although the system is designed to enhance accuracy, it is “willing” to accept some degree of (non-random) error if the cost of that error is viewed as less than the cost of performing the additional mental work needed to enhance accuracy. Third, beliefs about whether a person or group poses opportunity and/or threat affordances are not determined solely by the goals, strategies, intentions, and capacities of that person or group, but rather by the relationship of those target features to the vulnerabilities, needs, and goals of the perceiver (Gibson, 1979; McArthur & Baron, 1983). An orange has a set of specific properties, including a shape, size, weight, sugar content, and taste. If one is hungry, these features enable the orange to be a food. If, however, one is being chased by an angry person, these same features enable the orange to be a projectile-weapon; if one is smitten by the charming traveler seated next to you on the plane, these features enable the orange to be a gift; and if one is trying to explain the concept of “affordance” to a classroom of students, these features enable the orange to be a pedagogical device. Although noth- ing has changed about the orange, the perceiver’s particular goals, needs, desires, or vulnerabilities have changed what the orange affords the perceiver 250 Steven L. Neuberg et al. in the moment—eatability versus throwability versus giftability versus pedagogability. Moreover, just as an orange may be viewed as a food that affords nutrition for a hungry perceiver but as a projectile that affords protection for an endangered perceiver, a Mexican immigrant willing to work hard for low wages may be viewed as an economic opportunity by a restaurant owner seeking inexpensive labor but as an economic threat by a laborer seeking employment. Beliefs about whether a person or group poses opportunity and/or threat affordances are determined by the relationship between features of the target and the vulnerabilities, needs, and goals of the perceiver. Fourth, merely identifying the opportunities and threats others may pose is insufficient for enhancing one’s outcomes. Rather, one must act upon these identifications in ways designed to increase one’s access to those potential opportunities and/or to mitigate one’s vulnerability to those potential threats. Functional actions are facilitated by specific, relevant affective states (e.g., Cosmides & Tooby, 2000; Ekman, 1999; Nesse, 1990; Plutchik, 1980; Tooby & Cosmides, 1992) and, indeed, beliefs about opportunity and threat affordances do recruit feelings and actions apparently designed to facilitate access to potential opportunities and to reduce vulnerabilities to potential threats (Neuberg et al., 2011). Believing that a person carries a contagious disease typically elicits disgust, which prepares and motivates one toward avoidance—a solution to the threat of contamination. Believing that a person affords friendly social affiliation typically elicits interest and happiness, which prepare and motivate one toward approach—a solution to the opportunity for friendship. Beliefs about the specific opportunities and threats potentially afforded by others facilitate functionally relevant feelings and behaviors.

2. Stereotyping and stereotypes as affordance management tools Stereotyping is the mental process of categorizing a person as being a member of a particular group and then inferring that the person possesses the characteristics one believes typical of members of that group (i.e., stereotypes). People stereotype others a lot. Indeed, one can reasonably argue that stereotyping is the default process through which people come to understand one another, at least early in acquaintanceship (e.g., Fiske & Neuberg, 1990). Why? An affordance management approach to social stereotypes 251

Stereotyping has traditionally been conceived of as serving the function of simplifying the information-rich social world for perceivers limited by insufficient cognitive resources (Allport, 1954; Hamilton, 1981; Tajfel, 1969). Although stereotyping is indeed a cognitively inexpensive way of knowing something about another, from an affordance management perspective, mental efficiency is unlikely to be the function of stereotyping. Quick, but significantly wrong, understandings of the opportunities and threats afforded by others are likely to be quite problematic for members of a highly interdependent social species like ours. In contrast, then, to a view that conceptualizes stereotyping as functioning to simplify a socially complex world, our view is that the foundational function of stereotyping is to maximize the opportunities and minimize the threats afforded by others, and that this will typically be facilitated by having a more accurate understanding of those we encounter. We stereotype others because, by knowing whether someone is male or female, of prepubescent or parenting age, or a member of my tribe versus yours, we know something (imperfectly) about whether she or he is likely to facilitate or hinder our own goals and outcomes.a If the aim of stereotyping is to enable valid inferences about others’ affordance-relevant capacities and inclinations, then people are not likely to stereotype others in terms of just any dimension. Rather, the dimensions used for categorizing others should be those actually useful for predicting people’s affordance-implying behaviors. That is, we should stereotype others in terms of dimensions that help us predict whether they will help versus harm us, love versus leave us, feed versus steal from us. Thus, although research clearly shows that people can stereotype others in terms of seemingly arbitrary dimensions (e.g., Tajfel, Billig, Bundy, & Flament, 1971), the dimensions typically employed in naturalistic social perception are unlikely to be arbitrary. Few of us in the real world categorize people as “over-estimators” or “under-estimators,” or by our preferences for the artists Klee versus Kandinsky—as in research investigating effects of minimal, meaningless groups—because in the real world such distinctions

a We wish to be clear: By suggesting that stereotyping serves the function of accurate understanding is not to say that it leads to perfect, or even high degrees of, accuracy. We return to the issue of accuracy later. We are also not suggesting that people rarely go beyond stereotyping to employ processes designed to gain benefits of individuating others; they do (e.g., Fiske & Neuberg, 1990; Neuberg, 1992; Neuberg & Fiske, 1987; Pendry & Macrae, 1994). Indeed, the affordance management approach suggests very specific circumstances and ways in which people might do so (for an overview, see Sng, Williams, & Neuberg, 2017). 252 Steven L. Neuberg et al. provide limited information about significant social opportunities and threats people may potentially afford us. A comprehensive explanation of stereotyping should address why we stereotype people using some dimensions rather than others, as well as what the specific stereotype content associated with those dimensions is likely to be. Our analysis does this, addressing, for example, why people readily stereotype others on the basis of cues implying disease status, kinship, and coalitional membership (for a review, see Sng et al., 2017). We focus here, however, on some critical dimensions explored in our labs—sex, age, ecology, race, sexual orientation, and body weight and shape.

3. Sex-by-age stereotyping and stereotypes A rich body of work demonstrates that people readily stereotype on the basis of sex and age (e.g., Eagly & Steffen, 1984; Hummert, Garstka, Shaner, & Strahm, 1995; Kite, Stockdale, Whitley, & Johnson, 2005; North & Fiske, 2012; Rudman, Greenwald, & McGhee, 2001; Spence & Helmreich, 1978; Williams & Best, 1990). It seems intuitive that we do so, but why? Why are age and sex such relevant dimensions for stereotyping?

3.1 Sex-by-age (not sex and age) stereotyping Our answer: Sex and age are particularly useful affordance cues, providing information about the likely goals and capacities of others and thereby the opportunities and threats they might pose. To develop this idea, we draw upon life history theory, a conceptual framework originating in evolutionary biology and behavioral ecology to explain how organisms allocate energy to the tasks of growth,b mating, and parenting to effectively survive and successfully reproduce (Charnov, 1993; Kaplan & Gangestad, 2005; Stearns, 1992). Central to life history theory is the concept of trade-offs: Because energy is finite, allocating energy toward one task (e.g., finding a new mate) means that the same energy is not available for other tasks (e.g., caring for existing children; Del Giudice, Gangestad, & Kaplan, 2015). One cannot use the same calorie twice. Theoretically and empirically, a range of factors influence the trade-offs that individuals make. Two such factors are sex and life stage. b Growth refers both to somatic growth (building the body) and to investment in embodied capital—the longer-term acquisition of knowledge and skills (Del Giudice, Gangestad, & Kaplan, 2015). An affordance management approach to social stereotypes 253

Because of sex differences in human reproductive biology, sex influences what individuals invest their energy in. Following parental investment theory (Trivers, 1972), the sex that invests more in offspring will also tend to be choosier in selecting mates, given the greater costs potentially incurred by them from indiscriminate mating. One effect of this greater choosiness is that the sex with lower parental investment will need to engage in more intense intrasexual competition to gain access to mates. In the human case, because females have a higher minimum obligatory parental investment than do males—they are the sex that gestates and nurses offspring upon birth—they are likely to be the choosier sex when it comes to selecting male mates, meaning that males will tend to invest more effort in finding and competing with other males for female mates. Indeed, men tend to have stronger mating goals than women (especially when seeking short-term mates), whereas women tend to have stronger parenting goals than men (e.g., Buckels et al., 2015; Gangestad & Simpson, 1990; Neel, Kenrick, White, & Neuberg, 2016; Schmitt, 2005). Of course, these are not absolute sex differences; there exists considerable individual variation within males and females regarding investment in mating and parenting goals. (Interestingly, this within-sex variation is itself partly predicted by other aspects of life history theory, an aspect we address in the section on ecology stereotyping, below.) From a life history perspective, life stage matters, too. Individuals who have not yet reached sexual maturity invest energy in bodily growth and the accumulation of skills and knowledge (Del Giudice et al., 2015). Upon sexual maturity, when reproduction becomes possible, energy might then be diverted toward finding a mate, as focusing resources solely on growth cannot lead to successful reproduction. Finally, upon having offspring, resources can be diverted toward parental care. This is especially important in our species given the high dependency of infants at birth and our relatively long developmental period (Kaplan, Hill, Lancaster, & Hurtado, 2000). From this life history analysis, one would thus expect parenting goals to increase with age, and particularly when individuals transition into a parenthood life stage. Mating goals, in contrast, should exhibit the opposite pattern, decreasing with age as individuals transition away from a mating to a parenting life stage. Indeed, mate-seeking goals do seem to decrease with age, whereas the goal of care for family members, in general, increases with age (Neel et al., 2016). Thus, both sex and age shape important goals that have significant implications for how people behave. But they do not shape goals and behaviors 254 Steven L. Neuberg et al. independent of one another. Rather, sex and age shape goals and behaviors interactively. Even though males are generally more oriented toward mating goals than are females, this sex difference typically diminishes at older ages when parenting goals begin to divert individuals—even males—from mating goals; even though females are generally more oriented toward parenting goals than are males, this sex difference is likely to be greater once individuals actually have children in which to invest. If sex and age interact to shape social goals, then affordance-managing social perceivers are likely to be attuned to sex and age as they interact to predict goals and behaviors, rather than to sex and age as independent predictors of goals and behaviors. That is, we would expect perceivers to categorize others in terms of “sex-by-age” interactions (rather than categorizing others independently by sex and by age) and to hold sex-by-age stereotypes (rather than independent sex stereotypes and age stereotypes). Indeed, this seems to be the case (Sng, Williams, & Neuberg, 2020b). First, employing the “who-said-what” paradigm (Stangor, Lynch, Duan, & Glas, 1992; Taylor, Fiske, Etcoff, & Ruderman, 1978), we find that perceivers categorize others not by their sex or age independently, but by sex and age interactively (Sng et al., 2020b). In general, perceivers are more likely to misattribute sentences said by an individual to other individuals of the same sex or age. For example, men are more likely to be confused with other men than with women, and young adults are more likely to be confused with other young adults than with the elderly. But those main effects are qualified by the sex-by-age interaction: Confusions are especially likely to occur at the intersection of sex and age (see Fig. 1). For example, young men are most likely to be confused with other young men but much less so with either elderly men or young/elderly women. This tracks the idea that, if affordances vary at the intersection of sex and age, then social perceivers should consequently categorize others by intersections of sex by age. The only reason for social perceivers to categorize in terms of sex-by-age intersections—rather than categorizing by sex and age independently—is if the content of the stereotypes within different sex-by-age intersectional categories are usefully distinct. Indeed, the content of people’s stereotypes do differ depending on sex-by-age intersections. We note that this is not generally recognized in the literature, with only a few articles noting that stereotype content may differ as a function of sex-age intersectionality (e.g., Brewer, Dull, & Lui, 1981; Fabes & Martin, 1991), and even these presentations lacked explanations for the particular stereotype content to be found within the intersectional categories. In contrast, the affordance An affordance management approach to social stereotypes 255

Fig. 1 Sex and age error types in “who said what” task. Findings indicate that participants encoded stimulus persons by sex-age intersection, rather than by sex and age independently. Error bars represent Æ2S.E. From fig. 1 in Sng, O., Williams, K. E. G., & Neuberg, S. L. (2020b). Sex-age stereotyping: Social perceivers as lay adaptationists. Evolution and Human Behavior, 41, 136–149. Reprinted with permission from Elsevier. management perspective—in combination with life history theory— uniquely generates predictions about what this intersectional content might be. For instance, if men are more oriented toward mating goals than women are, as argued above, and this sex difference is stronger at younger than older ages, one might expect perceiver stereotypes to track this sex by age pattern of goals and behavior. This is indeed the case (Sng et al., 2020b). For instance, perceivers stereotype 28 year-old men to be more oriented toward finding short-term mates than 28 year-old women, but this stereotyped sex difference is significantly reduced for stereotypes of 60 year-old men and women. Our approach has important implications for certain highly-studied stereotypes. For example, the conventional belief among stereotyping scholars is that males are stereotyped as more agentic (e.g., competitive, assertive) than are females, due to the different social roles (e.g., law enforcement officers, social workers) in which they find themselves (e.g., Koenig & Eagly, 2014). However, if being agentic is associated with short-term mating goals—which it is—then stereotypes of agency are likely to follow a similar pattern as sex-by-age stereotypes of mating goals. This is the case: People stereotype young men to be more agentic than young women but—as with stereotypes of mating goals—this stereotyped sex difference is reduced for stereotypes of older men and women. 256 Steven L. Neuberg et al.

Hence, an affordance management perspective, when combined with a life history perspective, lends unique insights for thinking about sex and age stereotyping. Whereas both the theoretical and empirical research literature has focused on sex and age stereotyping as independent phenomena, our framework predicts and finds that perceivers categorize others at the intersection of sex and age, and—importantly—predicts the particular content of the stereotypes people hold of individuals at these specific sex-by-age intersections. No other theoretical approaches have done this, a priori.c

3.2 Beyond between-group stereotypes about general characteristics: “Within-group” and “directed” stereotypes The stereotyping literature has focused on “between-group” stereotypes— stereotyped differences across two or more different groups, such as the c The specific nuanced predictions of Sng et al. (2020b) emerge from the pairing of the affordance management and life history perspectives. Given that social role theory (e.g., Eagly & Steffen, 1984; Koenig & Eagly, 2014) has also spoken to the origin of sex and age stereotypes, one might wonder whether it can provide a useful alternative to the life history theory component of our conceptualization. According to social role theory, stereotypes emerge from perceived covariations between different groups being differentially represented in specific societal roles (e.g., occupations) that require different dispositions or behavioral inclinations. For example, if men are more likely to serve in law enforcement whereas women are more likely to serve in child care—and people believe that law enforcement requires greater agentic characteristics whereas child care requires greater communion characteristics—then men will come to be stereotyped as agentic and women as communal; from this perspective, the stereotyped characteristics follow the social roles. One might ask whether the life history and social role theories generate unique predictions. We believe so. For example, perceivers hold specific sex-age stereotypes of mating and parenting goals, and providing perceivers with direct information about such goals overrides the application of typical sex stereotypes. Such patterns emerge uniquely from theorizing from the affordance management-life history perspective. That said, we do not find the approach of generating unique predictions conceptually useful because the life history and social theories exist at fundamentally different levels of analysis. Social role theory provides a proximate-level explanation whereas life history theory provides a more ultimate explanation. That is, social role theory relies on perceptions of sex and age differences in social roles as an explanation for the origin of specific stereotypes, but it does not explain why these role differences exist in the first place; to say that people are compelled into these role differences by societal pressures merely pushes the question back a level, to why those societal pressures exist as they do. Social role theory also has no deep rationale for why perceivers might find it useful to pay attention to role differences. Our view, in contrast, holds that people adopt different social roles in part because they are engaging in different adaptive goals: For males and females of different ages, different roles are likely to be useful for facilitating their prominent goals. More generally, it is a conceptual mistake to posit ultimate and proximate explanations as “alternatives” to one another; indeed, it is often the case that explanations at these different levels complement one another well. One last point: Unlike our conjunction of affordance management and life history theory, social role theory does not have the theoretical architecture from which to posit the existence of “ecology” stereotypes, nor the implications of these stereotypes for explaining the specific contents of race stereotypes in the United States—phenomena we turn to later. An affordance management approach to social stereotypes 257 stereotypes that males are more agentic than women, or that Blacks are more aggressive than Whites (Deaux & Kite, 1993; Devine & Elliot, 1995; Eagly & Steffen, 1984; Ehrlich, 1962; Gilbert, 1951; Hummert, 1990; Judd & Park, 1993; Karlins, Coffman, & Walters, 1969; Katz & Braly, 1933; Kite et al., 2005; Madon et al., 2001). For certain circumstances, it makes great sense to hold such between-group stereotypes, as in a situation in which a perceiver needs to decide between approaching a man or woman for help. Possessing the stereotype that women are more caring than men would certainly be useful for such a situation. Consider, however, a very different—and arguably more common—circumstance, in which one needs to decide how to interact with a single, particular person. Perhaps, for example, a perceiver needs to decide whether to share risky personal information with a female colleague at work. Believing that women are more helpful than men is not very useful here; there is no male alternative under consid- eration. Rather, what one wants to know is whether women like your colleague are more helpful than they are competitive (versus more competitive than they are helpful)—what we might label a “within-group stereotype.” From an affordance management perspective, what we want to know is the extent to which a particular person affords us opportunities and/or threats, and so within-group stereotypes should be very useful tools in one’s repertoire. Within the data for the studies described above exploring sex-by-age stereotypes, we are able to examine the content of within-group stereotypes. Their patterns pose important challenges to the traditional sex-stereotype literature. That literature has long shown that women are stereotyped to be more communal than agentic, and men to be more agentic than communal (e.g., Eagly & Steffen, 1984). However, if stereotypes of agency emerge partly from beliefs about mating goals, one might expect the within-sex differences in stereotypes about agency and communion to also shift with age. Indeed, although men are stereotyped as more agentic than communal between 18 and 28 years old, this pattern reverses at 60 years-old and older (when male mating goals have greatly diminished, and thus parenting goals are presumably prioritized), such that older men are stereotyped to be more communal than agentic (Fig. 2, left panel). Similarly, although women are stereotyped to be more communal than agentic at 40 years-old and above, 18–28 year-old women—ages at which mating goals are presumably prioritized—women are stereotyped as just as agentic as communal (Fig. 2, right panel). Such findings run counter to predictions generated by traditional approaches to sex stereotyping and stereotype content. 258 Steven L. Neuberg et al.

Male Stereotypes Female Stereotypes 7.5 7.5

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6.5 6.5

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5.0 5.0 Agency Agency 4.5 4.5 Communion Communion 4.0 4.0 8182840 60 8 18284060 Age Age Fig. 2 Within-sex stereotypes of Agency/Communion (Males: left panel, Females: right panel). Error bars represent Æ1S.E. Copyright Oliver Sng (2019).

Moreover, the very idea of within-group stereotypes has received no conceptual attention within the broader stereotyping literature. Yet a recognition of within-group stereotypes emerges organically from the affordance management perspective, and the specific sex-by-age within- group stereotype content emerges organically from the marriage of the affordance management and life history approaches. The affordance management approach suggests yet another nuanced twist on traditional conceptions of stereotypes. Stereotypes have traditionally been conceptualized and assessed as general traits or characteristics— “men are competitive,” “women are caring” (e.g., Eagly & Steffen, 1984; Rudman et al., 2001; Spence & Helmreich, 1978; Williams & Best, 1990). However, if the primary function of stereotypes is to help social perceivers anticipate opportunities and threats, stereotype content should go beyond capturing general behavioral inclinations. Instead, they should capture behavioral inclinations as directed toward particular kinds of individuals—that “men are competitive towards [target].” After all, from an affordance management perspective, it is less important for one to know that members of a certain group are generally, or “on average,” aggressive than it is to know that they are aggressive toward persons like oneself.We label such stereotypes—beliefs about the likely behavioral inclinations that members of a stereotyped group have toward certain targets—“directed” stereotypes (Sng, Williams, & Neel, 2020). Early evidence suggests that people do indeed hold directed stereotypes, and in ways that make functional sense. For example, as mentioned above, when asked about their stereotypes of the competitiveness of women and An affordance management approach to social stereotypes 259 men, people typically stereotype men as more competitive. However, when people are asked about the extent to which women and men are specifically “competitive towards young women,” the typical sex stereotype is reversed: Women are stereotyped as more competitive than men (Sng et al., 2020)—reflecting the reality of female intrasexual competition. This represents just one example of the many nuances that emerge when social stereotypes are measured in this “directed” way. The idea of directed stereotypes challenges existing thinking about stereotype content. Although typically characterized as simple, stereotypes instead are often strategically complex. By providing specific information about whether members of a group pose threats or opportunities to oneself or important others, directed stereotypes provide especially valuable affordance information—information more valuable than merely knowing whether members of a group may, on average, afford opportunities or threats. Given this value, we might expect social perceivers to hold directed stereotypes for a wide range of social groups, yet we know of no other research exploring this possibility. That the idea of directed stereotypes has long gone undiscovered requires one to question the approaches taken to this point in studying the content of people’s beliefs. For example, if perceivers do indeed hold directed stereotypes, as we suggest, what exactly has stereotyping research been measuring when it inquires about general trait stereotypes? When respondents provide general trait stereotypes, how do they do this if their actual stereotypes are directed? Do they aggregate across multiple directed stereotypes (e.g., when asked how competitive they think men are, do respondents combine in some way their stereotypes about how competitive men are toward a range of different groups?)? Do they, instead, bring to mind only a single, specific directed stereotype (e.g., when asked how competitive they think men are, do respondents think about how competitive men are toward other men?). One cannot discover what one does not measure; if researchers inquire only about general trait stereotypes they cannot learn about people’s directed stereotypes. In the absence of relevant theory, researchers are unlikely to ask about more nuanced forms of stereotypes, perhaps explaining why stereotypes have traditionally been characterized as simple. The affordance- management approach, however, enables us to move beyond that. In sum, conceptualizing stereotypes as affordance management tools enables us to identify important nuances in how people use sex and age information to understand others, highlights the importance of (less- examined) within-group stereotypes, and leads to the novel idea that many social stereotypes may be directed in nature. 260 Steven L. Neuberg et al.

4. Ecology and race stereotyping and stereotypes In 1978, Louise Matthews published the illustrated book Bunches and Bunches of Bunnies, which aimed to teach young children the fundamentals of multiplication. It is no coincidence that Matthews chose rabbits as the sub- jects of proliferation: A female rabbit reaches sexual maturity at around 6 months-old and can produce over 1000 offspring in its lifetime. A book on bunches and bunches of mountain gorillas would not be nearly as effective for teaching multiplication; females of this species do not reach sexual maturity until around age 10, and will bear between only two and six offspring in their lifetime. Why do these differences exist? Why do some species start producing offspring at an early age—and in large numbers—whereas others wait years and only give birth to a small number of offspring? Why do the parents of some species invest years of effort into raising and caring for their young, whereas others invest only minutes or days? In humans, why is the mother’s mean age at first birth 20 years-old in Afghanistan and Nicaragua, but 30 years-old in Singapore and Denmark? And what do these questions have to do with understanding the process of stereotyping and the content of stereotypes? Above, we found that evolutionary biology’s life history theory was useful for understanding the kinds of behaviors that males and females of different ages engage in, thereby providing leverage for understanding both why affordance-managing social perceivers so ubiquitously categorize others in a sex-by-age manner and why the stereotypes that exist at these sex- by-age intersections have their particular content. We return to life history theory here, as it also provides important insights into race stereotyping and stereotypes—and, more foundationally, suggests a largely overlooked dimension for stereotyping: ecology. Recall that life history theory provides a framework for understanding how organisms invest effort into different adaptive goals. Devoting resources to one of these tasks at any given time necessarily means devoting fewer resources to another—for example, energy spent seeking new mates or producing additional offspring is energy that cannot simultaneously be invested into parenting existing offspring. The pattern of an organism’s tradeoffs across these tasks reflects its life history strategy. Life history strategies represent integrated, interdependent suites of traits and behaviors that can be roughly conceptualized on a continuum ranging from fast to slow An affordance management approach to social stereotypes 261

(Ellis, Figueredo, Brumbach, & Schlomer, 2009). Broadly speaking, fast life history strategies are associated with earlier first sex, greater promiscuity, higher number of offspring, impulsivity, and antisocial behavior such as violence and physical aggression; slow life history strategies are characterized by the opposite, including later maturation and reproduction, lower numbers of offspring, higher parental investment, and greater risk aversion (e.g., Brumbach, Figueredo, & Ellis, 2009; Ellis, 2004; Griskevicius, Tybur, Delton, & Robertson, 2011). Whether an organism adopts a slow or fast life history strategy depends in large part on its environment. This is because features of ecologies critically shape energetic priorities by altering the costs and benefits of adopting particular allocation strategies. For example, prioritizing early investment in growth and reaching sexual maturity is beneficial in ecologies with high mortality rates, as delaying reproduction in such an environment could result in the organism dying without reproducing. Two dimensions that promi- nently shape resource allocation strategies are resource availability and unpredictability, as it relates to extrinsic causes of mortality (Ellis et al., 2009). Resource-poor and unpredictable ecologies can be conceptualized as ‘desperate’ ecologies, whereas ecologies that are both resource-sufficient and stable can be conceptualized as ‘hopeful’ ecologies (e.g., Neuberg & Sng, 2013). As with the slow/fast distinction, these different types of ecologies can be thought of as anchoring two ends of a continuum, with variation occurring across the range. Desperate ecologies tend to engage behavioral and psychological tendencies associated with fast life history strategies, whereas hopeful ecologies engage traits and behaviors associated with slower life history strategies. These differences manifest because, if resources are scarce and the world is uncertain, with the salient possibility of an early death, it makes sense (in terms of transmitting one’s genes into the next generation) to begin reproducing earlier, rather than later—but thereby trading off investment in one’s own growth. In contrast, if resources are plentiful and the world is stable, investing in a slower strategy by delaying mating—and thereby being able to invest in one’s own capacities instead— can pay off in the greater success of one’s offspring. Each respective strategy is more or less fitness enhancing, on average, given particular ecological constraints. As compared to other organisms, humans exhibit investment patterns consistent with a slow life history strategy (Kaplan et al., 2000). However, there is considerable variation among individuals with respect to reproductive timing, sexual promiscuity, investment in education, 262 Steven L. Neuberg et al. investment in parenting, impulsivity, and opportunism. These differences likely derive, in part, from differences in the ecological circumstances expe- rienced by these individuals. Indeed, experimental research supports this point, finding that activating cues suggestive of desperate ecologies leads individuals to become more sexually promiscuous, aggressive, risk-taking, and present-oriented—and this is especially the case for individuals who themselves grew up in a relatively desperate environment (e.g., Dunkel, Mathes, & Beaver, 2013; Dunkel, Mathes, & Decker, 2010; Dunkel, Mathes, & Papini, 2010; Griskevicius et al., 2011). The behaviors associated with fast and slow life history strategies have important affordance implications for social perceivers. For example, it is useful for us to know whether the people we encounter are likely to be impulsive versus reliable, interested in short-term versus long-term mating opportunities, or likely to gain resources and status through physical aggression versus through longer-term acquisition of skills; such inclinations have important implications for achieving our own goals. If ecology shapes people’s life history strategy, and life history strategy shapes behavior in important affordance-relevant domains, then ecology is a highly useful cue for social perceivers to use in predicting the behavior of others. Thus, social perceivers should be attuned to cues of ecology, and should use this information to make inferences about the likely (life history strategy-relevant) behavior of others (Neuberg & Sng, 2013; Williams, Sng, & Neuberg, 2016). To test this idea, Williams et al. (2016) explored whether social perceivers have an implicit understanding about the ways in which ecology shapes behavior and use that information to stereotype others in ways consistent with what life history theory itself would predict. In a series of studies, the researchers presented participants with descriptions of a person from either a desperate or hopeful environment and asked participants to rate the imagined individual on a series of life history strategy-relevant traits, grouped into sexual unrestrictedness, impulsivity, investment in children, investment in education, and opportunistic behavior. Results revealed that social perceivers stereotype individuals from desperate ecologies as more likely to possess faster life history characteristics (i.e., to be sexually promiscuous, impulsive, aggressive, and less invested in their children and their own education), and stereotype individuals from hopeful ecologies as more likely to possess slower life history characteristics (i.e., to prefer long-term relationships, avoid risk, be less likely to engage in social opportunism, and to be highly invested in their children and their own education). Importantly, the researchers addressed several alternative An affordance management approach to social stereotypes 263 explanations for these results. First, ecology-driven stereotypes are not simply derived from wealth stereotypes: ecology stereotypes were similarly applied to targets with varying levels of personal wealth. Second, ecology stereotypes do not reflect a mere positivity-bias toward individuals from hopeful ecologies; there were no ecology stereotypes for positively- or negatively-valenced characteristics irrelevant to life history strategy, such as “sympathetic” or “quarrelsome.” Furthermore, the same ecology-driven stereotypes are held by individuals who themselves live in both relatively hopeful and relatively desperate environments (Sng, Williams, & Neuberg, 2020a).d Importantly, because ecology fundamentally shapes the likelihood of particular traits and behaviors, ecology stereotypes should exist—and sub- stantially shape people’s perceptions of others—across societies. Indeed, research demonstrates that ecology stereotypes exist in similar forms in countries around the globe, including the United Kingdom, Romania, Japan, and India (Sng et al., 2020a). Within each sample of participants, individuals stereotyped targets from resource poor and unpredictable environments as being more impulsive, sexually unrestricted, opportunistic, and less invested in their education and their children, as compared to targets from resource sufficient and stable environments. These findings lend additional weight to the notion that ecology is a fundamental social dimension used to categorize others. It is so fundamental, in fact, that it may underlie one of the most commonly researched and discussed categories of social perception: race. From an affordance management perspective, social perceivers should categorize others in a way that, across human history, provided useful inferences about the affordance-relevant capacities and inclinations of targets. Race, in this sense, is a bit of a puzzle; our human ancestors would not have frequently encountered others of different races, and thus selection pressures would not have shaped a psychology sensitive to race, per se (Kurzban, Tooby, & Cosmides, 2001).e However, if, in modern times, race d Although the ecology stereotypes held by these individuals are the same, our framework would predict that the evaluation of the affordances posed by particular targets may differ. For example, although individuals living in hopeful and desperate ecologies may both stereotype a target from a desperate ecology as sexually unrestricted, the extent to which this is viewed as a threat or an opportunity is likely to differ as a function of the perceiver’s own ecology-driven life history strategy (Williams et al., 2016). e Although recent anthropological and genetic evidence indicates that Homo sapiens likely had contact and reproduced with other homo species (e.g., Hammer, Woerner, Mendez, Watkins, & Wall, 2011)— which could be conceived of other “races”—it would seem premature to presume that this contact would have been sufficiently extensive, frequent, and long-lasting to provide an evolutionary explanation for modern humans’ psychological sensitivity to race, per se. 264 Steven L. Neuberg et al. reliably correlates with a dimension that perceivers would have evolved to detect, then we would expect perceivers to use race as a proxy for that more fundamental category. Indeed, in many places around the world, members of different races (or ethnicities, tribes, castes) are differentially distributed across relatively desperate and hopeful ecologies. For example, in the United States, Black Americans are more likely than White Americans to live in relatively resource poor and unpredictable environments (Massey, 2004; Sampson, Raudenbush, & Earls, 1997). This confound between race and ecology raises the possibility that perceivers associate desperate ecologies with Black individuals and hopeful ecologies with White individuals, and stereotype these targets accordingly. If this is the case, then some of the most prominent American racial stereotypes (e.g., that Black Americans are sexually promiscuous, physically threatening, and irresponsible; Madon et al., 2001) might instead reflect ecology stereotypes. Moreover, this suggests that providing information about a target’s ecology should lead to the application of similar stereotypes irrespective of that person’s race. Put simply, if race is serving as a heuristic cue to ecology, then ecology information should “override” race information (Williams et al., 2016). Williams et al. (2016) tested exactly this prediction in an experiment that presented participants with ecology-only information, race-only information, or race-and-ecology information and then measured stereotypes of the target’s life history strategy (i.e., their presumed sexual unrestrictedness, impulsivity, opportunistic behavior, investment in education, and investment in children). In the ecology-only conditions, participants stereotyped targets from desperate ecologies as possessing faster life history strategies than targets from hopeful ecologies, replicating earlier findings. In the race-only conditions, Black Americans were stereotyped as possessing faster life history strategies than White Americans; indeed, stereotypes of Black Americans tracked stereotypes of targets from desperate ecologies, whereas stereotypes of White Americans tracked those of targets from hopeful ecologies. Critically, in the race-and-ecology conditions, Black and White Americans from desperate ecologies were stereotyped as possessing equally fast life history strategies, whereas Black and White Americans from hopeful ecologies were stereotyped as possessing equally slow life history strategies. For social perceivers, ecology information overrode race information when inferring the life history strategy-relevant behavior of others (see Fig. 3). Williams et al. (2016) argue that ecology is privileged by the social perception process because it is targets’ ecology, and not their race, that carries An affordance management approach to social stereotypes 265

Fig. 3 Life history strategy stereotypes as a function of manipulated ecology and race. These findings indicate that participants favored ecology information over race information when inferring a target’s life history traits. Error bars represent Æ1SE. From fig. 2 in Williams, K. E. G., Sng, O., & Neuberg, S. L. (2016). Ecology-driven stereotypes override race stereotypes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 113, 310–315. Reprinted with permission of the National Academy of Sciences. causal information about their affordance-relevant behavior. It is important to note, however, that this does not suggest that race is an unimportant psychological construct, nor that all race stereotypes derive from ecology stereotypes. What the findings do suggest, however, is that many prominent race stereotypes may not reflect beliefs about race, per se, but instead heuristic inferences about life history strategy. Thus, when more proximate cues to life history are presented (such as information about a target’s home ecology), the application of these “race” stereotypes disappear. Reducing the application of pernicious race stereotypes is a worthy goal in multiple domains, but is perhaps especially important within the criminal justice system, wherein race-based discrimination continues to shape outcomes for minority offenders. Compared to Whites, Black Americans are disproportionately stopped and frisked (Gelman, Fagan, & Kiss, 2007), are more likely to be arrested (Kochel, Wilson, & Mastrofski, 2011), are more likely to be convicted (Sommers & Marotta, 2014),receivemoreseveresentences (Mitchell, 2005), and are less likely to be released on parole (Huebner & Bynum, 2008). Some scholars suggest that these differences are driven primarily by stereotypes that Black offenders are more threatening, dangerous, prone to chronic offending, and more likely to recidivate than White offenders (e.g., Bridges & Steen, 1998; Steffensmeier, Ulmer, & Kramer, 1998). 266 Steven L. Neuberg et al.

Yet, as described above, these “race” stereotypes track the stereotypes of individuals from desperate ecologies, specifically with respect to impulsivity and social opportunism. It may be, then, that providing information about ecology would similarly lead race stereotypes about criminality and recidi- vism to disappear. Current research suggests this is indeed the case (Williams, 2017). After generating a list of stereotypically “Black” crimes (e.g., vehicle theft, drug possession, resisting arrest; Osborne & Davies, 2012), Williams (2017) asked participants to report how likely particular targets were to commit each of these crimes. As before, these targets were presented with ecology-only information, race-only information, or ecology-and-race information. Once again, Black and White targets from desperate (and hopeful) ecologies were stereotyped as similarly likely (or unlikely) to commit crimes that were, in the absence of ecology information, viewed as stereotypically “Black.” Such findings suggest a potentially novel approach for reducing discriminatory outcomes in the legal system: race differences in legal outcomes should be attenuated to the extent that targets present similar cues to ecology. In this research on ecology and race stereotypes, then, we again see the value of a perspective that views social perceivers as affordance managers who employ observable cues in an attempt to draw useful inferences about the likely opportunities and threats others may pose. In this case, a psychology of affordance management leads perceivers to form particular stereotypes about people from desperate versus hopeful ecologies—because these ecologies actually do shape people’s affordance-relevant behaviors. Moreover, this approach also provides one answer to the question of why stereotypes of Blacks and Whites in the United States have the particular content they do: Because the distribution of the two races in the United States is confounded with desperate versus hopeful ecologies, the stereotypes associated with individuals of each race will track the stereotypes associated with the ecologies in which each race is presumed to live.

5. Size-by-shape stereotyping and stereotypes We have outlined how an affordance management perspective can provide new ways of understanding the “big three” of sex, age, and race stereotypes. The utility of this approach goes well beyond rethinking traditionally studied stereotypes, though. Consider, in this vein, stereotypes about weight. An affordance management approach to social stereotypes 267

Well over half of US adults are overweight or obese (National Center for Health Statistics, 2018), and people with overweight or obesity are negatively stereotyped and regularly experience prejudice and discrimination (e.g., Brewis, Wutich, Falletta-Cowden, & Rodriguez-Soto, 2011; Crandall, 1991, 1994, 1995; Diedrichs & Puhl, 2016; Puhl & Heuer, 2009; Saguy, Frederick, & Gruys, 2014). This stigmatization can affect targets’ physical and mental health (e.g., Brewis et al., 2011; Major, Eliezer, & Rieck, 2012). Moreover, above and beyond the direct effects of weight itself, targets of weight-related stigma may also experience insidious health consequences, including, ironically, weight gain (e.g., Brewis, 2014; Major, Hunger, Bunyan, & Miller, 2014; Tomiyama et al., 2018). Given rising rates of obesity across the world (Global Burden of Disease Obesity Collaborators, 2017; NCD Risk Factor Collaboration, 2016), and the concomitant, increasing prevalence of fat stigma (e.g., Brewis et al., 2011; Diedrichs & Puhl, 2016; Puhl & Brownell, 2003), understanding the social perceptions of fat is a pressing and timely challenge. Various theoretical frameworks have been proposed to account for why people with overweight and/or obesity are stigmatized. Within social psychology, chief among these accounts is the attributional approach. From this perspective, individuals with overweight or obesity are stigmatized because the specific attributions people make about why they are overweight or obese—for example, laziness or a lack of social control—are themselves viewed as negative (e.g., Crandall, 1994, 1995; Crandall & Martinez, 1996; Puhl & Brownell, 2003). Also receiving some empirical support is an evolutionary social psychological account. On this view, clinical obesity may be interpreted by social perceivers as a potential pathogen cue, thereby eliciting disgust and behavioral intentions to avoid obese persons (e.g., Park, Schaller, & Crandall, 2007). Therefore, obese people are stigmatized because (a) infectious agents may play some causal role in clinical obesity today (e.g., Whigham, Israel, & Atkinson, 2006) and/or (b) obesity is a statistical deviation from morphological body norms and, because morphological non-normality and pathogen loads covaried in ancestral environments, such deviations might trigger evolved pathogen-avoidance strategies; thus people with significant overweight and obesity can be perceived as infectious, evoke disgust reactivity, and trigger behavioral avoidance (e.g., Park et al., 2007; Park & Isherwood, 2011; Schaller & Neuberg, 2012; van Leeuwen, Hunt, & Park, 2015; see also Kurzban & Leary, 2001; Schaller & Duncan, 2007). 268 Steven L. Neuberg et al.

Although varying in important ways, these theoretical approaches (and other approaches less well supported; see Puhl & Brownell, 2003) share (at least) two unstated assumptions—(1) that perceivers view all fat as “bad,” and (2) that perceivers view all fat as “the same.” These assumptions are likely responsible for an under-appreciation in the literature of the nuanced ways in which social perceivers actually stereotype people with overweight and obesity. To understand the source of this nuance—and more fundamentally, to understand why people with overweight and obesity are stereotyped at all— we need to understand why the presence of fat on a person’s body would have meaningful affordance implications for others. To answer this, we first need to understand the biological functions of fat. Fat storage is an adaptive strategy that humans—and many other animals—use to buffer against periods of food scarcity (e.g., Nettle, Andrews, & Bateson, 2017). When the body takes in more energetic resources (e.g., calories) than it expends (e.g., via activity), some of those resources can be converted to fat and stored on the body for future use when caloric resources are scarce. The amount of fat on another’s body is thus a potentially useful cue to another’s affordance-relevant past activities (and, perhaps, future inclinations). Specifically, social perceivers might use the presence of “excess” fat on a body as a cue that an individual has been able to access more calories than needed to pursue daily activities, suggesting that the person may have special access to resources or special resource-acquisition or resource-holding traits; as a cue that the person has consumed more calories than s/he has needed for daily activities, suggesting that the person may lack self-control or, if resources are scarce within the broader social group, may be greedy and unwilling to share excess resources; and/or as a cue that the person has limited his or her expenditure of daily effort, suggesting that the person may be lazy or, in instances requiring cooperative effort, that the person may be free- riding on the efforts of others. Indeed, findings from our own labs (Krems & Neuberg, 2020) and from other work cited above (e.g., see Diedrichs & Puhl, 2016) reveal that perceivers stereotype others with increasing overweight and obesity as being lazy and lacking self-control. Similarly, social perceivers might use the absence of fat on a body as a cue to an opposite set of inferences (e.g., Gangestad & Scheyd, 2005), or to infer that the target’s body is diseased. (A lack of body fat can indicate that a person is unable to adequately process consumed calories or that s/he is using those calories to bolster immune An affordance management approach to social stereotypes 269 responses rather than maintaining the body.) Indeed, even as people might sometimes view those with underweight as possessing greater self- control and less laziness than even those of average weights, our findings also reveal that people are also more likely to view (significantly) underweight targets as less healthy than average-weight targets (Krems & Neuberg, 2020). In addition to providing a theoretically-grounded explanation for why people with overweight and obesity are stereotyped in some of the specific ways they are, our approach also adds important nuances based on where the fat is stored on the body. There exist qualitatively different types of fat, and these different fats are typically stored in different places on the body, have different hormonal antecedents, can serve different biological functions, and are linked to different health- and other affordance-related outcomes (e.g., Canoy, 2010; Jasienska, 2013; Vague, 1947). Most work on the biology of fat contrasts two major types: abdominal fat, located centrally on the body, and gluteofemoral fat, located in the hips, thighs, and buttocks. Both sexes can carry abdominal and gluteofemoral fat. That said, male bodies tend to prioritize the accumulation of abdominal fat whereas female bodies—especially the bodies of young, reproductive-aged women—tend to prioritize the accumulation of gluteofemoral fat (although women with overweight and obesity can present with either type of fat) (Krems, Barlev, & Becker, 2020). Although both types of fat provide stores of calories, women’s gluteofemoral fat appears to have characteristics especially beneficial for conception, gestation, lactation, and offspring neurodevelopment (Ellison, 2003; Frisch, 2004; Jasienska, 2001; Jasienska, Ziomkiewicz, Ellison, Lipson, & Thune, 2004; Lassek & Gaulin, 2006, 2008). Evidence even suggests that such a pattern of fat distribution— specifically having an hourglass figure (fat in the breasts, hips, and thighs, and not in the abdomen)—might be an honest signal of female fecundity and reproductive potential (e.g., Lassek & Gaulin, 2019; Zaadstra et al., 1993). Thus, from an affordance-management perspective, we might expect this pattern of fat deposition to be sexually attractive to men. Our framework therefore predicts that, over and above the amount of fat on a woman’s body, the location of that fat should play an important role in how that woman is viewed. In particular, reproductively-aged female targets with primarily gluteofemoral fat (versus abdominal fat) should be viewed as relatively sexually attractive and as more maternal, and thus should be somewhat buffered from the high levels of stigmatization that often emerge with overweight and obesity. 270 Steven L. Neuberg et al.

In a series of studies designed to test that hypothesis among others (Krems & Neuberg, 2020), participants were recruited from cross-ethnic/ societal populations and reported trait inferences and evaluative responses to stimuli from the BODy Size and Shape (BODSS) figure set, which was designed to systematically vary targets by age, sex, size/Body Mass Index (BMI), and fat deposition location (Neuberg & Krems 2016). Some participants from each sample viewed seven male and/or seven female reproductively-aged targets (labeled as 18 or 26 years-old). Importantly, these stimuli included two overweight and three obese figures that held BMI constant but varied location of fat deposition (abdominal, gluteofemoral, global). In keeping with previous findings, people more strongly stigmatized higher-BMI targets. But across ethnicities and societies, overweight and obese female targets with gluteofemoral fat were stigmatized less than same-BMI counterparts with abdominal fat. In fact, the obese female target with gluteofemoral fat tended to be viewed as more sexually attractive and as a better mother than were objectively lower-BMI overweight females with abdominal fat (Krems & Neuberg, 2020; see Fig. 4). This is just one of many findings from our research demonstrating that people with more fat are not always viewed less favorably and that people’s stereotypes and feelings differ as a function of fat location—predictions generated by our affordance-management approach but not by extant approaches.

6 overweight obese

Sexual Desirability 2

1 verage-weight Underweight Underweight A Overweight-gluteo. Overweight-abdom. Obese-gluteo. Obese-global Obese-abdom. Obese-abdom. Fig. 4 Male participants’ inferences about 18 year-old female targets’ sexual desirability. Error bars represent Æ1SE. Copyright Jaimie Arona Krems (2019). An affordance management approach to social stereotypes 271

As a second example, recall that a surfeit of sex-typical fat might cue a range of potential trait inferences, including (a) the ability to marshal caloric resources (linked, e.g., to dominance), (b) an unwillingness to share those resources (linked, e.g., to greediness), and/or (c) hesitation or inability to expend caloric resources (linked, e.g., to laziness). Because women in particular might be attuned to the resource-commanding power of prospective male partners—male partner provisioning abilities have been critical for offspring survival, and hence have become a major feature in women’s mate preferences (e.g., Buss, 1992; Hurtado & Hill, 1992; Hurtado, Hill, Hurtado, & Kaplan, 1992; Kaplan et al., 2000; Marlowe, 2003)—women might be especially likely to use sex-typical abdominal fat on parenting-aged men (i.e., “dad bod”) as a cue to their ability to provide resources (e.g., good father). Indeed, preliminary evidence suggests that this is likely the case (Krems & Neuberg, 2020; see Fig. 5). Because the affordance implications of fat are many and complex, we would expect people’s stereotypes of those carrying surfeit (as well as deficit) amounts of fat to be similarly multidimensional and complex. We have provided just a couple of examples, but our ongoing research is finding that these stereotypes reflect a complex calculus that takes into account not just the absolute amount of fat on a target but also where the fat is stored and the

6 overweight obese

Paternal 3

1 verage-weight A Underweight Overweight-gluteo. Overweight-abdom. Obese-abdom. Obese-global Obese-gluteo. Fig. 5 Female participants’ inferences about 35 year-old male targets’ paternal abilities. Error bars represent Æ1SE. Copyright J. A.Krems (2019). 272 Steven L. Neuberg et al. target’s sex and age. Moreover, given that the affordances a target is perceived to offer are shaped not just by features of the target but also by the perceivers’ own goals, desires, and vulnerabilities—and by the ecological circumstances that shape these perceiver needs—we would expect fat stereotypes to be even more nuanced yet.

6. From stereotypes to prejudices and discrimination From sex to size, stereotypes are useful because they provide social perceivers with a starting point for understanding the threats and opportunities potentially afforded by others. However, affordance management systems are not just for perceiving and forming beliefs about opportunities and threats. They should also drive functional feelings and actions. Merely believing that an individual may pose a threat or provide an opportunity is insufficient if one is to successfully remediate that threat or take advantage of that opportunity. Rather, action is required. From an affordance- management perspective, prejudices function to facilitate focused actions (discrimination) aimed at remediating the perceived threats or taking advantage of the perceived opportunities. That is, activated stereotypes (about specific threats and/or opportunities) evoke specific prejudices which, in turn, engage behaviors (discrimination) intended to remediate specific stereotypic threats and exploit specific stereotypic opportunities.

6.1 From specific threats to specific prejudices and discriminatory inclinations Note the use of “prejudices” (plural), rather than the more common “prejudice.” From an affordance-management perspective, characterizing prejudice simply as a valenced (negative-positive) feeling about groups and their members is problematic because such feelings are insufficiently nuanced to generate the specific behavioral solutions needed to successfully address the qualitatively distinct threats and opportunities groups and their members are believed to afford. In contrast, prejudices that are functionally nuanced as emotions are—for example, prejudices anchored in anger versus fear versus disgust—do have this capability. Indeed, distinct emotions are designed both to be elicited by different threat and opportunity affordances and to evoke functionally relevant specific responses (Carver & Scheier, 1990; Cosmides & Tooby, 2000; Ekman, 1999; Frijda, 1986; Izard, 1991; Nesse, 1990; Plutchik, 1980; Roseman, Wiest, & Swartz, 1994; Tomkins, 1963). Anger is evoked by the belief that something has been An affordance management approach to social stereotypes 273 illegitimately taken and facilitates a specific inclination to approach the taker, whereas fear is evoked by the belief that one is in physical danger and facilitates a specific inclination to escape, and disgust is evoked by the belief that one is at risk of physical or moral contaminants and facilitates a specific inclination to avoid exposure and contact. Indeed, groups stereotyped as posing different threats elicit quite different prejudices and discriminatory inclinations (e.g., Cottrell & Neuberg, 2005; Cottrell, Richards, & Nichols, 2010; Mackie & Smith, 2018). Moreover, these differentiated responses occur even when traditional valence-type measures suggest that prejudices are similarly negative. For instance, in one study (Cottrell & Neuberg, 2005), prejudices directed toward Mexican American men and gay men were similarly “negative.” Yet, prejudices of Mexican American men were characterized by fear (elicited by stereotypes that such men threaten physical violence), whereas prejudices toward gay men were characterized by disgust (elicited by stereotypes that such men threaten physical and/or moral contamination). Traditional measures focused on general prejudice and discrimination often miss (and mask) important distinctions in how people actually feel about and act toward groups and their members. Recent work has elaborated on the ability of the affordance- management approach to explain many unrecognized nuances in sexual prejudices (see Pirlott & Cook, 2018). Consider, for example, that the prejudices that heterosexuals hold about sexual minorities tend to be strongly founded in feelings of disgust, more so than other so-called “negative” emotions (Cottrell & Neuberg, 2005; Filip-Crawford, 2015). But why should anti-gay prejudices be based primarily in disgust, rather than in, say, anger, fear, or envy? To understand the evolved functions of disgust is to answer the question: Disgust evolved primarily as a response to infectious pathogens—as a response designed to facilitate the avoidance of contamination (e.g., Schaller & Park, 2011; Tybur, Lieberman, Kurzban, & Descioli, 2013)—and non-heterosexuals are stereotyped by many as posing health threats (e.g., Cottrell & Neuberg, 2005). Moreover, disgust has a second evolved function of facilitating the avoidance of moral contamination— and non-heterosexuals are stereotyped as undermining group values (e.g., Brambilla & Butz, 2013; Cottrell & Neuberg, 2005), violating normative gender roles (e.g., Pirlott & Neuberg, 2014; Winegard, Reynolds, Baumeister, & Plant, 2016), and counter-socializing children to become non-heterosexual and gender non-normative themselves (e.g., Neuberg, Smith, & Asher, 2000). 274 Steven L. Neuberg et al.

It is clear that the disgust prejudices held by many toward non- heterosexuals arise from stereotypes that they contaminate others— physically and socially (e.g., Herek & Capitanio, 1998; Neuberg et al., 2000). Indeed, some people view homosexuality itself as a pathogen (Filip-Crawford, 2015; Filip-Crawford & Neuberg, 2016), and their behavioral responses (especially toward gay men) appear to track surprisingly well lay theories of how one should respond to the presence of infectious pathogens. For example, just as people believe that increasingly aggressive attempts to eradicate infectious pathogens are needed when the pathogens appear in highly interconnected social networks (i.e., where contagion is thus more likely), preliminary evidence suggests that sexually prejudiced people are especially likely to behave aggressively toward gay men when they believe that their own social networks are highly interconnected (Filip-Crawford, 2015). Findings such as these, linking specific threat stereotypes to specific prejudices and discriminatory inclinations, readily emerge from an evolutionary affordance-management approach. We have focused thus far on the stereotypes and prejudices held by heterosexuals toward sexual minorities. The logic of the affordance management approach can be as readily applied, however, to how sexual minorities themselves view heterosexuals and other sexual minorities. Consider, for example, research by Pirlott, Rusten, and Butterfuss (2016), who found that lesbian, gay, and bisexual men and women stereotyped heterosexual men and women as posing a range of potential threats, and that such threats predicted functionally relevant prejudices founded in anger, fear, and moral disgust. In essence, stereotypes that heterosexuals threatened discrimination and unreciprocated sexual interest threats predicted anger prejudice; stereotypes that heterosexual men threaten physical safety and sexual autonomy predicted fear prejudice; and stereotypes that heterosexuals threaten values predict moral disgust toward heterosexuals. In sum, the affordance-management approach articulates a functional linkage between specific stereotypes, specific prejudices, and specific forms of discrimination: Prejudices facilitate forms of discrimination aimed at remediating the particular threats (or exploiting the particular opportunities) groups and their members are believed to pose.

6.2 Base versus affordance stereotypes, and their implications for prejudices and discrimination The affordance management perspective provides great theoretical leverage not only for better understanding why we stereotype, but also An affordance management approach to social stereotypes 275 for understanding why specific groups (e.g., based on sex, age, race, home ecology, body shape, sexual orientation) are stereotyped in the particular ways they are. We have also introduced the idea of directed stereotypes—that stereotypes are likely to represent behavioral inclinations not as general traits displayed broadly across settings (e.g., “young men are competitive”) but rather as behavioral inclinations directed toward specific others (e.g., “young men are competitive against young men”). We have also introduced the idea of within-group stereotypes—that people hold stereotypes that are useful not only for comparing between groups (“young women are more caring than young men”) but also for capturing comparative behavioral inclinations within groups (“men are more competitive than they are caring”). Here we introduce yet another insight about the different forms stereotypes take, distinguishing between “base stereotypes” and “affordance stereotypes” (Pick & Neuberg, 2020). To effectively interact with one’s social world, it is useful to represent both what others are actually like—their features, abilities, and inclinations—and what those characteristics might mean for the perceiver—whether they imply threats or opportunities. Base stereotypes reflect the usefulness of representing group members as they are. They are beliefs about the capacities and behavioral inclinations of groups and their members (e.g., “Mexican immigrants are willing to work hard for low wages,” or “young Black men are physically strong”). Affordance stereotypes, in contrast, reflect the usefulness of mentally representing the affordance- relevant implications these base stereotypes hold for the perceiver. They are beliefs about the threats and opportunities those group members may pose (e.g., “Mexican immigrants threaten my economic well-being”). Although base stereotypes may contain significant sources of error, they nonetheless aim to capture “what is” about a group’s capacities and inclinations—to represent a group’s “factual” nature as gleaned by perceivers based on personal experiences, social communication, media, and the like. In this sense, base stereotypes can be seen as relatively objective, and they may indeed contain significant kernels of truth to the extent that a person’s sources of information actually depict target group members accurately. Because base stereotypes are meant to exist independent of a perceiver’s motivations—because perceiver motivational circumstances change, it would be useful to have “facts” about a group in hand for assessing that group’s affordance implications for new motivational circumstances as well—base stereotypes are inherently neither “positive” nor “negative” from a perceiver’s perspective. That Mexican immigrants are willing to 276 Steven L. Neuberg et al. work hard for low wages, or that young African American men are physically strong, can be either good or bad for the perceiver, depending on the perceiver’s vulnerabilities, needs, or desires. In contrast to base stereotypes, affordance stereotypes aim to capture the threats and/or opportunities that base stereotypes afford for the perceiver. Founded on base stereotypes, affordance stereotypes are shaped by each individual’s vulnerabilities, needs, or desires. For example, from the base stereotype that “Mexican immigrants are willing to work hard for low wages” may arise either the affordance stereotype that “Mexican immigrants provide economic opportunities for people like me” (if one is looking to hire inexpensive labor) or the affordance stereotype that “Mexican immigrants pose an economic threat to people like me” (if one is competing for the same jobs). Similarly, from the base stereotype that “young African American men are physically strong” may arise either the affordance stereotype that “young African American men make desirable sports teammates” (if one is an athlete looking for teammates) or “young African American men are potentially dangerous” (if one feels vulnerable to physical attack). Thus, from the affordance-management perspective, motivational states (e.g., felt vulnerability) create affordance stereotypes from base stereotypes, suggesting that people who feel differentially vulnerable are likely to hold different affordance stereotypes even while holding identical base stereotypes. Moreover, to the extent that prejudices and discrimination serve the function of remediating perceived threats (or of exploiting perceived opportunities), as argued earlier, we would expect that affordance stereotypes, but not base stereotypes, would shape prejudices and discrimination. This last point fits with research demonstrating that certain prejudices are especially likely to emerge for those perceiving functionally-relevant threats (Neuberg & Schaller, 2016; Schaller & Neuberg, 2012). For example, as people become concerned about contagious disease, they become more prejudiced against those with cues of physical abnormality or foreign- ness (e.g., Huang, Sedlovskaya, Ackerman, & Bargh, 2011; Navarrete, Fessler, & Eng, 2007; Park et al., 2007; Young, Sacco, & Hugenberg, 2011); when economic competition is made salient, people become more prejudiced against groups stereotypically viewed as strong economic com- petitors (Butz & Yogeeswaran, 2011); and when people are concerned about threats to group values, they report greater prejudices against atheists (Cook, Cottrell, & Webster, 2015; Gervais, 2013). Our suggestion is that these specific differences in prejudices exist because differences in motivational states result in different affordance stereotypes despite shared base stereotypes. An affordance management approach to social stereotypes 277

The distinction between base and affordance stereotypes has gone unrecognized in the literature. Preliminary findings (Pick & Neuberg, 2020), however, suggest that this distinction is both real and that it has a range of important theoretical and applied implications. Across five studies investigating a variety of stereotypes, prejudices, and discriminatory inclinations associated with target groups ranging from Mexican and Asian immigrants, Fundamentalist Christians and Muslims, Asian college students, and even fictitious “Sidanians,” Pick and Neuberg (2020) found strong support for their central hypotheses—some that characterize the distinctions between base stereotypes and affordance stereotypes and others that highlight their differential effects on prejudices and discrimination. For example, people’s needs, desires, and vulnerabilities shaped their affordance stereotypes, but not their base stereotypes. Even while holding the same base stereotypes about a group, people with different vulnerabilities held different affordance stereotypes. Moreover, affordance stereotypes statistically mediate the extent to which perceiver vulnerabilities shape prejudices and discrimination, and base stereotypes do not predict prejudices or discrimination once affordance stereotypes are controlled for. These findings are consistent with the affordance-management view that affordance stereotypes—and not base stereotypes—play the direct role in driving prejudices and discrimination. Distinguishing between people’s base and affordance stereotypes is useful in many ways. For example, meta-analyses reveal that correlations among stereotypes, prejudices, and discrimination tend to be of only weak to moderate magnitude (Dovidio, Brigham, Johnson, & Gaertner, 1996; Park & Judd, 2005). If stereotypes are an important driver of prejudice and discrimination, why are these correlations so low? One speculation is that the wrong stereotypes are often being assessed: Because base stereotypes, themselves, serve only as building blocks for the creation of affordance stereotypes, studies that assess base stereotypes should reveal only negligible correlations with prejudices and discrimination whereas studies that assess affordance stereotypes should reveal much larger correlations with prejudices and discrimination—as Pick and Neuberg (2020) observe in their findings. Better understanding the causes of prejudices will likely greatly benefit from differentiating between base stereotypes and affordance stereotypes. Moreover, appreciating the role of affordance stereotypes in driving prejudices and discrimination, and the role of perceiver vulnerabilities and desires in creating these stereotypes, should provide additional conceptual leverage for designing interventions to mitigate prejudices and their effects. 278 Steven L. Neuberg et al.

Differentiating between base stereotypes and affordance stereotypes provides a frame for conceptualizing intriguing patterns of prejudices that heterosexual men and women hold toward gay men, lesbians, and bisexual men and women (Pirlott & Neuberg, 2014). Identifying potential mating opportunities and threats is a central goal for humans during certain periods of their lives, and the coupling of a target person’s sex with his or her sexual orientation reveals whether that person’s sexual interests are congruent or incongruent with a perceiver’s sexual and relationship interests. Thus, knowing another’s sexual orientation provides important affordance-relevant information—whether that person’s sexual interests align with the perceiver’s sexual interests as either mutual sexual interest or mutual disinterest, or misalign as either unwanted or unrequited sexual interest. Moreover, because the aim of identifying another’s affordances is to facilitate one’s own goals, we would expect that the affordance implications of other’s sexual interest would shape downstream affective and behavioral responses. Given that different categories of sexual orientation pose different opportunities and threats—and do so differently for heterosexual men and women—one would expect the pattern of prejudices directed toward gay men, lesbians, and bisexual men and women to be quite nuanced—and to be very different than the traditional expectations that non-heterosexual persons, as a broad class, elicit negative sexual prejudices. Consistent with this, consider the studies reported by Pirlott and Neuberg (2014). Heterosexual college students were asked to report (1) their own sexual and relationship interest toward heterosexual men and women, bisexual men and women, gay men, and lesbians, and (2) their beliefs about the sexual interests of each of those six groups (i.e., base stereotypes). Subtracting the former ratings from the latter ratings provides, for each target group, an index of believed sexual interest compatibility (i.e., affordance stereotypes), with positive scores indicating perceived unwanted sexual interest (i.e., threat-affordance stereotype), negative scores indicating perceived unrequited sexual interest (i.e., threat-affordance stereotype), and scores near zero indicating perceived mutual sexual interest (i.e., opportunity- affordance stereotype) or mutual disinterest (i.e., non-affordance regarding mating). Note that these affordance stereotypes were not assessed directly or explicitly, but were instead derived from separate reports of perceivers’ own sexual interests and their base stereotypes of other groups’ sexual interests. Heterosexual men stereotyped gay and bisexual men as affording unwanted sexual interest (threat-affordance stereotype) and reported An affordance management approach to social stereotypes 279 disliking them; they stereotyped lesbians as affording unrequited sexual interest and reported a moderate, but not extreme, dislike of them; they stereotyped heterosexual and bisexual women as affording mutual sexual interest (opportunity-affordance stereotype) and reported liking them; and they stereotyped heterosexual men as affording mutual sexual disinterest (non- affordance regarding mating) and reported liking them. Heterosexual women revealed a very different pattern: They stereotyped bisexual men, bisexual women, and lesbians as affording unwanted sexual interest and reported disliking them; they stereotyped heterosexual men as affording mutual sexual interest and reported liking them; and they stereotyped heterosexual women and gay men as affording mutual sexual disinterest and reported liking them (see Fig. 6). Note the nuances in these findings. Whereas some sexual minorities were disliked, others were not, and this depended on the particular opportunities and threats they were stereotyped as affording. Gay men were disliked by heterosexual men but liked by heterosexual women—because they are believed by heterosexual men to afford unwanted sexual interest but by hetereosexual women to afford mutual sexual disinterest; bisexual women were liked by heterosexual men but disliked by heterosexual women— because they are believed by heterosexual men to afford wanted sexual interest but by heterosexual women to afford unwanted sexual interest.

4.00 Male Targets Female Targets 3.50

3.00

2.50

2.00 General Negativity

1.50

1.00 Heterosexual Bisexual TargetsHomosexual Heterosexual Bisexual Targets Homosexual Targets Targets Targets Targets

Heterosexual Women Heterosexual Men Fig. 6 General negativity toward homosexual, bisexual, and heterosexual women and men, by heterosexual women and men. Error bars represent Æ1SE. From fig. 3A in Pirlott, A. G. & Neuberg, S. L. (2014). Sexual prejudices: Avoiding unwanted sexual interest? Social Psychology & Personality Science, 5,92–101. Reprinted with permission from Sage Publications. 280 Steven L. Neuberg et al.

These nuances raise significant challenges to approaches to studying sexual prejudices that view sexual minorities as outgroups or deviants eliciting negativity from the heterosexual majority. In contrast, the pattern of findings across different sexual orientation groups mapped cleanly onto participants’ mating-relevant affordance stereotypes about the different groups. As articulated, affordance stereotypes are shaped by perceivers’ current or chronically active vulnerabilities, desires, needs, and goals. Concerns about unwanted sexual interest will be psychologically salient and influential for individuals for whom mating is a prominent goal, and thus should be an especially strong predictor of sexual prejudices in college-aged samples— the samples studied by Pirlott and Neuberg (2014). However, one might expect the above patterns to look quite different for people in different life stages and/or for whom different goals are especially salient. For example, threats to social norms may be particularly salient and influential for individuals seeking social acceptance; these individuals might especially stigmatize those whose sexual orientations are base-stereotyped as violating gender norms. In contrast, concern about socialization practices may be particularly salient for parents of young, impressionable children, with the consequence that the sexual prejudices and discriminatory behaviors of these individuals may be directed toward those base-stereotyped as actively advocating for societal acceptance of sexual minorities. In sum, also emerging from our affordance management approach is the novel distinction between base stereotypes and affordance stereotypes—a distinction we believe has much power for advancing our understanding of the causes of prejudices and discrimination.

7. The stigma of “invisibility” Most of the research taking an affordance-management approach to understanding prejudice and stigma has focused on threat-affordances. It is clear that threat-affordances have explanatory power, but some examples of stigmatization do not as obviously fit a threat-focused framework. When a Black woman’s statements are attributed to someone else, is that an indica- tion that she was seen as a threat? When an older woman is barely noticed by others, what threats was she seen to pose? When an Asian man is ignored by potential romantic partners, how can we use an affordance-management approach to understand why? These examples illustrate interpersonal invisibility—being ignored and treated with indifference by others (Neel & Lassetter, 2019; An affordance management approach to social stereotypes 281

Purdie-Vaughns & Eibach, 2008; Sesko & Biernat, 2010). Although this form of stigmatization differs markedly from threat-based stigmatization, affordance management nonetheless offers a nuanced look at how and when interpersonal invisibility is likely to manifest. Specifically, this approach suggests that: (a) stigmatization comes in both threat-based and invisibility- based forms, and (b) a single stigmatized group will sometimes be stigmatized as a threat, and at other times as invisible. Still, (c) certain groups are especially likely—or unlikely—to be invisible.

7.1 Relevance appraisals: Perceived opportunity and threat as separate dimensions An affordance-management perspective argues that, as social perceivers, we seek to determine who will help us to stay safe, who may threaten our romantic partnerships, who may help us to raise our children, and who may make us vulnerable to disease. That is, we seek to appraise whether others may be relevant to our goals, vulnerabilities, desires and needs, and, if they are, the specifics ways they are relevant (e.g., by posing opportunities or threats). Relevance appraisals have been identified as foundational components of numerous psychological phenomena, from impression formation (Brewer, 1988; Fiske & Neuberg, 1990) to the accessibility of different mental representations to consciousness (Eitam & Higgins, 2010) and the experience of emotion (Scherer, 2001), to name just a few.f What kinds of relevance appraisals do perceivers make? Perceivers may sort the people they encounter according to whether those others are more likely to facilitate or obstruct goals—that is, along a single dimension stretching from opportunity to threat. Alternatively, perceivers may independently assess whether a person is likely to facilitate goals and also whether that person is likely to obstruct goals. In this case, threat and opportunity would constitute independent dimensions of social judgment (Fig. 7;see Neel & Lassetter, 2019). For any one goal, some people would be seen as facilitating that goal (high opportunity, low threat), and others would be seen as impeding that goal (low opportunity, high threat). Still others would be seen

f What is the difference between a relevance appraisal and an affordance stereotype? When judging whether any particular person poses threats or opportunities, affordance stereotypes will combine with other cues—such as emotion expression, body posture, relationship to the perceiver, etc.—to produce relevance appraisals. Whereas affordance stereotypes represent expectations about groups, relevance appraisals reflect expectations about individuals, which can draw on affordance stereotypes as one important source of information. 282 Steven L. Neuberg et al.

High Opportunity

Goal Goal Facilitators Facilitators and Impeders

Low High Threat Threat

Goal Goal Irrelevant Impeders

Low Opportunity Fig. 7 Independent dimensions of threat and opportunity. Adapted from fig. 1 in Neel, R. & Lassetter, B. (2019). The stigma of perceived irrelevance: An affordance- management theory of interpersonal invisibility, Psychological Review, 126, 634–659. Published by the American Psychological Association and reprinted with permission.) as both facilitating and impeding that goal (high opportunity, high threat). Finally, some people will be seen as neither facilitating nor obstructing a goal, and thus as irrelevant (low opportunity, low threat). Initial evidence from confirmatory factor analyses across 3 studies, 5 goals, and over 30 target groups supports treating opportunity and threat as different dimensions, rather than ends of a single continuum (Lassetter, Neel, & Hehman, 2019). In addition to supporting the independence of threat and opportunity judgments, the data further suggest that whether a group is stereotyped as a threat and/or an opportunity varies across goals. For example, whereas homeless people were stereotyped as also not impeding economic advancement or mate-seeking goals, they were stereotyped as comparatively more of a threat to self-protection and disease avoidance goals.

7.2 From perceived irrelevance to invisibility stigma Disentangling threat and opportunity affordance stereotypes from one another helps us to understand that stigmatization will sometimes, but not An affordance management approach to social stereotypes 283 always, emerge from threat stereotypes. Stigmatization is commonly defined as devaluation (e.g., Crocker, Major, & Steele, 1998), and we devalue those who do not facilitate our goals (e.g., people who do not pose goal-relevant opportunities; Brendl, Markman, & Messner, 2003; Ferguson & Bargh, 2004; Kruglanski et al., 2002). Thus, both goal impeders and those who are goal irrelevant will be stigmatized because they are not seen as posing opportunities (the lower two quadrants of Fig. 7). But the character of the stigmatization should differ markedly. A perceiver will likely monitor the actions of those stereotyped as threatening, feel negative prejudice, and actively discriminate in order to manage the perceived threat. In contrast, from a functional point of view, a perceiver should expend as little attention, emotion, and behavior as possible on those stereotyped as irrelevant. In other words, irrelevant others will be interpersonally invisible. For example, the data outlined above on homeless people suggest that people concerned with mate-seeking and economic advancement may be particularly likely to ignore and feel indifferent toward homeless people. In contrast, people worried about physical safety or disease may monitor homeless people, feel negative prejudice toward them, and engage in active discrimination to minimize their likelihood of endangering safety or health. What leads a group to be appraised as threatening others’ goals, and thus subject to threat-based stigmatization, versus appraised as irrelevant, and thus treated as invisible? Although relevance appraisals of any particular person are likely shaped by an array of information—dynamic facial expressions, familiarity and relational closeness, inferences about personality, etc.— stereotypes are likely to shape relevance appraisals, particularly for strongly-held stereotypes or when diagnostic information about goal- relevance is unavailable. As an example, Black men are stereotyped as both violent and unintelligent, with the implications that a person concerned with self-protection may see a Black man as a threat whereas a person concerned with being outsmarted in the workplace may see that same Black man as irrelevant. Recent work likewise suggests that although Black women and men are associated with danger more so than White women and men (Thiem, Neel, Simpson, & Todd, 2019), and may thus be feared and avoided (Cottrell & Neuberg, 2005), Black women and Black men are less likely to be noticed or remembered by straight, opposite-sex Whites who are thinking about finding a romantic partner (Brown-Iannuzzi, Hoffman, Payne, & Trawalter, 2014; Neel, Lassetter, Chesser, & Xia, 2020). Importantly, then, the same group may be stereotyped as threatening to some goals and irrelevant to others. Any particular group will thus experience threat-based stigmatization in some situations and invisibility in others. 284 Steven L. Neuberg et al.

This dynamic nature of stigmatization may even extend to cases where a single base stereotype can sometimes lead to invisibility and sometimes to stereotyped threat, depending on perceivers’ goals. For example, Black women are stereotyped as masculine and aggressive (Ghavami & Peplau, 2013; Goff, Thomas, & Jackson, 2008). This may lead them to be ignored by potential male romantic partners (Galinsky, Hall, & Cuddy, 2013), but to be accepted as dominant leaders (e.g., Livingston, Rosette, & Washington, 2012). Whether a particular group’s stereotypes lead to invisibility or threat- based stigmatization, or to being valued, depends in part on what those stereotypes suggest about how the group is relevant to others’ goals. That said, any stereotype that suggests cross-domain inability to affect others’ goals should be particularly likely to produce invisibility. Power and status reflect the ability to impose costs on and provide benefits to others (e.g., Anderson, Hildreth, & Howland, 2015; Magee & Galinsky, 2008). Groups stereotyped as generally low in power and status—children, elderly people, poor people—are thus especially likely to be invisible, whereas high status groups—middle-aged adults, rich people—are especially unlikely to be invisible. We see, then, that an affordance-management approach to stereotypes and stereotyping also lends valuable and nuanced insights to a form of stigmatization—invisibility—that has important implications for the psychology and outcomes of those so targeted.

8. Other implications The affordance management perspective is a broad one, and has many implications beyond those articulated above. We briefly explore several here.

8.1 Stereotype accuracy? There has long been significant and contentious debate about the accuracy of stereotypes (Allport, 1954). On the one hand, many stereotypes contain non-trivial kernels of truth—they meaningfully represent the world as it actually is—and thus are useful for social perceivers aiming to predict the behaviors of others (e.g., Jussim, Crawford, & Rubinstein, 2015; Swim, 1994). That said, biased, and even whole-cloth, misinformation about groups may be presented via social communication and media, and such information, if taken as valid, would mitigate against the possibility of stereotype accuracy in those cases. Moreover, even stereotypes that An affordance management approach to social stereotypes 285 meaningfully describe, on average, the aggregate of individuals within any particular group are unlikely to describe well all individuals within any particular group, or even one member of a group perfectly well. It strikes us that stereotypes can be both accurate and inaccurate, and the affordance management approach may usefully be applied to better understand the ways in which this may be so. Consider, first, the conceptual distinction we have introduced between base stereotypes and affordance stereotypes, predicated on the functionality of possessing beliefs that represent both what members of other groups are actually like (base stereotypes) and the implications of those characteristics for one’s desired outcomes (affordance stereotypes). We suggest that base stereotypes are likely to be non-trivially accurate—that is their aim—but that such degrees of accuracy are less likely to be observed for affordance stereotypes, which are constructed from base stereotypes within the context of perceivers’ felt vulnerabilities and desires (which is likely to add “noise” and perhaps even systematic bias to affordance stereotypes, thereby reducing their accuracy). Although defining and assessing stereotype accuracy is challenging ( Judd & Park, 1993), some of our recent findings are compatible with the view that base stereotypes, in particular, may be more likely to possess meaningful levels of accuracy (Pick & Neuberg, 2020). For example, compared to affordance stereotypes, base stereotypes tend to be held with high consensus and are unaffected by the motivational factors that so powerfully shape affordance stereotypes and downstream prejudices and discrimination. Moreover, other work (Sng et al., 2017) reveals that base stereotypes about those who live in more desperate versus hopeful ecologies are held both by people who live within those ecologies and those who do not—that there is a similar content to self- and other-stereotypes on the ecology-relevant traits. If base stereotypes were generally inaccurate, one would not expect this set of findings. There is a second way in which the affordance management approach may lend additional clarity to the issue of stereotype accuracy, and specifically to the idea that affordance stereotypes may be especially susceptible to inaccuracy biases—to biases that exaggerate the degree of threat (or opportunity) a group is seen as affording. Specifically, in line with the “smoke detector principle” (Nesse, 2005) and features of error management theory (Haselton & Nettle, 2006), the direction of any inaccuracies in affordance stereotypes are likely to be toward exaggerating threats, so as to encourage one to behave in ways that reduce the likelihood of the most costly errors. As one example, because the costs of being physically assaulted tend to be 286 Steven L. Neuberg et al. greater than the costs of missing out on a potentially friendly encounter, affordance stereotypes about young men from desperate ecologies are likely to be biased toward exaggerating their aggression threat, especially by social perceivers who tend to feel vulnerable to physical danger. In sum, we suspect that differentiating between base and affordance stereotypes, and incorporating ideas of functional calibration of threat— both of which fall out of an affordance management approach—may be useful for addressing the issue of stereotype accuracy.

8.2 The psychology of those targeted by stereotypes and stigma We have focused on the nuanced stereotypes that social perceivers use to manage the potential threats and opportunities that others afford them, and on the downstream implications of these stereotypes for prejudices and discrimination. We briefly discuss here three implications of the approach we have taken for the psychology of those so targeted, illustrating some additional contributions of the affordance management approach, beyond what more traditional models of target psychology provide.

8.2.1 Implications for targets’ management of public impressions The affordance management approach holds that people seek to identify the threats and opportunities others potentially afford, and generate responses to ameliorate those threats and exploit those opportunities. On this view, stereotypes, prejudices, and discrimination are tools we use to do so. Of course, those who are stereotyped and targeted with prejudices and discrimination are not mere recipients of others’ perceptions and actions. Targets are perceivers, too, with goals of their own they wish to accomplish. Consider, for example, the desire we all share in managing the impressions others have of us (Leary, 2005). Given the knowledge that people stereotype, beliefs about the particular stereotypes others hold of our group(s)—i.e., meta-stereotypes (Vorauer, Main, & O’Connell, 1998)— should usefully inform our impression management tactics. However, it is not enough for targets to believe that their group is simply viewed “negatively.” Others’ stereotypes are nuanced, as we have seen, and so to effectively manage the impressions others have of them, targets of those stereotypes should understand these stereotypes in their actual nuances so they can respond with tailored tactics of their own. In one set of studies designed to explore these ideas (Neel, Neufeld, & Neuberg, 2013), young Black men and people who reported being very overweight believed not just that others viewed them negatively in some An affordance management approach to social stereotypes 287 general sense, but rather that others stereotype them in very particular ways: Black men believed that others stereotype them as dangerous (and hold fear-based prejudices), whereas overweight people believed that others stereotype them as dirty and unhealthy (and hold disgust-based prejudices). These specific understandings predicted nuanced attempts at self- presentation. It was not that young Black men and people with overweight reported engaging in just any “positive” behavior to alter others’ impressions of them, but that they reported engaging in specific behaviors tailored to the particular threats they were stereotyped as posing: When these metastereotypes were made salient, Black men prioritized smiling for making a good first impression whereas people with overweight prioritized wearing clean clothes (Neel et al., 2013). Each group favored the specific strategy able to address the specific threat they are stereotyped to pose—of danger or disease, respectively.

8.2.2 Implications for targets’ own stereotypes and prejudices Targets are likely to be attuned to the nuances of others’ stereotypes and prejudices not only to manage how they are themselves viewed, but also because those stereotypes and prejudices themselves potentially constitute threats. That is, if Whites’ stereotypes of young Black men characterize them as dangerous and thus lead to extra-vigilant policing and extra-punitive sentencing practices, or if heterosexuals’ stereotypes of sexual minorities characterize them as threatening traditional norms and thus lead to exclusion from elementary school classrooms and other socialization venues, opportunities for young Black men and sexual minorities may be thwarted— and thereby constitute a threat to them. Because targets of stereotypes, prejudices, and discrimination must themselves manage the threats posed by others, we might expect to see their own stereotypes, prejudices, and discriminatory inclinations to be shaped by the stereotypes held of them. Consider, for example, work by Pirlott et al. (2016) in which the stereotypes held by self-identified lesbians, gay men, and bi-sexual women and men (LGBs) about heterosexuals explained their prejudices toward heterosexuals. For instance, stereotypes that heterosexual men pose physical safety threats predicted LGBs’ fear-prejudices of heterosexual men. Stereotypes that heterosexuals discriminate against LGBs predicted LGBs’ anger and resentment prejudices toward heterosexuals. Stereotypes that heterosexuals pose threats to LGB values predicted LGBs’ moral disgust toward heterosexuals. The threat stereotypes held about one group can lead the targeted group to hold functionally directed threat stereotypes of their own toward the original group. 288 Steven L. Neuberg et al.

8.2.3 Implications for the well-being of stigmatized targets Being stigmatized can have significant implications for one’s physical and mental well-being. The affordance-management approach highlights the nuanced stereotypes people hold. Given these nuanced stereotypes, and their downstream prejudices and discriminatory inclinations, we might expect to observe similar nuances in the well-being of those who are stigmatized. Consider the case of stigmatization based on overweight and obesity, in which weight stigmatization itself appears to cause negative health outcomes ranging from facilitating weight gain, inhibiting weight loss, and exacerbat- ing other weight-linked health consequences (e.g., Brewis, 2014; Major et al., 2012; Tomiyama et al., 2018). For example, Major et al. (2012) found that even average-weight women who erroneously perceived themselves as being overweight responded to weight stigma by increasing caloric con- sumption. Recall, however, findings reported above demonstrating that weight stigmatization of women is moderated greatly by the location of fat on the body—that unfavorable stereotypes of women with overweight and obesity (e.g., not sexually desirable, laziness, lack of self-control) are much stronger for women whose fat is located abdominally rather than gluteofemorally (i.e., on hips and thighs). What does this nuanced stereotyping and stigmatization mean for targets of fat stigma? Because females with greater abdominal fat depositions (relative to those with gluteofemoral fat depositions) are likely to experience more stigmatization, one might expect them to recognize this, to be especially likely to label themselves as being overweight or obese, and perhaps also to experience more negative effects associated with weight stigma. Preliminary findings provide some support for these hypotheses. For example, overweight and obese women with primarily abdominal (rather than gluteofemoral) fat are more likely to perceive others as stigmatizing them, to self-stigmatize, to respond to perceived stigmatization with self-reported unhealthy eating behavior, and to report lower self-esteem, lesser body satisfaction, and greater mental health issues (Barlev, Krems, & Neuberg, 2020). More broadly, this work further implies that any interventions aimed at ameliorating fat stigma and its negative consequences may be most effective when tailored to particular targets. For example, body positivity campaigns featuring only overweight or obese women with hourglass figures might be beneficial to some, but these campaigns might simultaneously fail to help— or might even harm—overweight or obese women who carry their fat primarily in their abdomens. An affordance management approach to social stereotypes 289

In sum, although we have focused primarily on how an affordance- management psychology has shaped stereotypes held by social perceivers, and the downstream implications of these stereotypes for prejudices and discrimination, we see that the framework can also be usefully extended to better understand the psychology of those so targeted.

9. Summary and conclusions As humans, our high degree of social interdependence affords great opportunities for achieving our fundamental goals while also affording great potential threats to that achievement. Because each individual’s success largely depends on the actions of others, we must effectively anticipate others’ actions, assess the threat and opportunity implications of those potential actions, and generate behaviors to decrease the potential threats and increase the potential opportunities. Stereotyping and stereotypes—along with downstream prejudices and discriminatory inclinations—are interlinked cognitive, affective, and behavioral tools within the affordance management system designed to do just that. The affordance management approach generates a large number of novel predictions and findings, some of which pose significant challenges to popular traditional approaches to stereotype content, stereotyping, and prejudice (see Table 1). We began this chapter by addressing issues of sex and age stereotyping and stereotypes, integrating our affordance management approach with evolutionary biology’s life history theory. Life history theory provides strong conceptual and empirical grounding for understanding how sex and life stage interact to shape male and female goals and behavior across different stages of the life span. We reasoned that if sex and age interact to shape social goals and behaviors—rather than to independently shape goals and behavior—then affordance-managing social perceivers would likely categorize others in terms of “sex-by-age” interactions (rather than categorizing others independently by sex and by age) and to hold sex-by-age stereotypes (rather than independent sex stereotypes and age stereotypes). This was the case (Sng et al., 2020b). Thus, whereas both the theoretical and empirical research literatures have focused on sex and age stereotyping as independent phenomena, we predicted and found that perceivers categorize others at the intersection of sex and age, and—importantly—we were able to predict the specific content of the stereotypes people hold of individuals at specific sex-by-age intersections. No other theoretical approaches have done this, a priori. 290 Steven L. Neuberg et al.

Table 1 Summary of differences between traditional versus affordance management approaches. Traditional approaches Affordance management approach • Conceptualize stereotypes as • Conceptualizes function of stereotypes functioning primarily to simplify the to predict opportunities and threats world, to enhance one’s own self- afforded by others so that one might views and self-regard, or to justify maximize those opportunities and existing prejudices and social systems minimize those threats • Conceptualize stereotypes as focusing • Conceptualizes stereotypes as focusing primarily on independent features of on interactive (intersectional) people (e.g., sex and age; size). stereotypes (e.g., sex-by-age; size-by- Measures stereotypes toward one shape). Measures theoretically-relevant category at a time (e.g., sex intersectional stereotypes (e.g., stereotypes) 18 year-old women, 45-year old men) • Focus primarily on between-group • Focuses also on within-group stereotypes (e.g., “women are more stereotypes (e.g., “women are more communal than men”). Measures communal than they are agentic”). stereotypes separately for different Measures multiple traits within each groups, then compares them group, then looks at within-group trait profiles • Focus on general trait stereotypes • Focuses also on directed stereotypes (e.g., “men are competitive”). (e.g., “men are competitive toward Measures general traits young men”). Measures theoretically- relevant traits as they are directed toward theoretically-relevant target others • Presume that stereotypes of Blacks and • Conceives of “race” as a cue in U.S. Whites are fundamentally about race, society to a person’s home ecology. per se People possess ecology stereotypes (i.e., beliefs about the inclinations of those living in “desperate” vs “hopeful” ecologies), and it is these stereotypes that drive many “race” stereotypes in the United States • Conceive of prejudice as a general • Conceives of prejudices (plural) as negative/positive evaluation of a profiles of specific emotional reactions group. Measures prejudice via to a group (e.g., fear versus disgust thermometer scale or other versus anger prejudices). Measures unidimensional valence scales or prejudices as a set of theoretically- aggregates over measures of specific relevant specific emotional reactions emotions (e.g., “To what extent do [group name] make you angry/afraid/etc.?”) An affordance management approach to social stereotypes 291

Table 1 Summary of differences between traditional versus affordance management approaches.—cont’d Traditional approaches Affordance management approach • Conceive of stereotypes as beliefs • Differentiates between qualitatively about groups and their members different types of stereotypes—base stereotypes, which aim to characterize groups as they objectively are (e.g., “Mexican immigrants are willing to work hard for low wages”), and affordance stereotypes, which aim to characterize groups in terms of the opportunities and threats they pose (e.g., “Mexican immigrants pose an economic threat [opportunity] for people like me”) • Conceive of stereotypes as predicting • Conceives of affordance stereotypes as prejudices and discrimination predicting prejudices and discrimination; base stereotypes do not, in the absence of affordance stereotypes • Conceives of affordance stereotypes as created from base stereotypes by perceiver active goals and vulnerabilities. Measures or manipulates theoretically-relevant perceiver goals/vulnerabilities/desires • Presume that sexual minorities are • Hypothesizes that sexual minorities generally disliked. Measures stigma or are disliked when they are perceived to prejudice via only thermometer scale pose specific threats (e.g., unwanted or other unidimensional valence scale, sexual interest), which explains or aggregates over specific emotions nuanced patterns of sexual prejudices. Measures theoretically-relevant threat- (and opportunity-) affordance stereotypes • Presume that stigmatized groups are • Hypothesizes that stigmatized groups perceived as threats can be perceived as threats, but also as goal irrelevant—as affording neither threats nor opportunities—leading to interpersonal “invisibility.” Measures both threat- and opportunity- affordances along with measures of stigma/prejudices Continued 292 Steven L. Neuberg et al.

Table 1 Summary of differences between traditional versus affordance management approaches.—cont’d Traditional approaches Affordance management approach • Presume that to alter perceiver • Hypothesizes that to alter perceiver impressions of them, stigmatized impressions of them, stigmatized targets may engage in generally targets will engage in specific behaviors positive behaviors. Measures multiple tailored to address the specific threat they behaviors but aggregates to create a are perceived to pose. Measures unidimensional valenced behavior behaviors theoretically relevant to scale alternative threats and analyzes separately by threat relevance

Note that the characterizations here of traditional approaches are grounded in either explicit statements or implicit assumptions (e.g., as evidenced by hypotheses generated, empirical methods employed, etc.) within those literatures.

Extending the integration of affordance management and life history theory enabled the derivation of a novel dimension for stereotyping and stereotypes—ecology (Williams et al., 2016). Here, a psychology of affordance management leads perceivers to form very specific stereotypes about people from “desperate” versus “hopeful” ecologies—because these ecologies actually do shape people’s affordance-relevant behaviors. Moreover, the affordance management approach helps explain why race stereotypes in the United States may have the particular content they do: Because the distribution of races in the United States is confounded with desperate versus hopeful ecologies, the stereotypes associated with individuals of particular races track the stereotypes associated with the ecologies in which these individuals are presumed to live. Many of the most pernicious stereotypes about race thus may not be fundamentally about race, per se, but instead about ecology. Further nuances in stereotype content—predicted by the affordance management approach but heretofore unrecognized by more traditional approaches—can be seen in stereotypes about sexual minorities and about those with overweight and obesity. For example, the presumption that people are negatively prejudiced against non-heterosexuals is a problematic simplification, as the reactions that heterosexuals have to sexual minorities vary greatly depending on whether the heterosexual is male or female and whether the non-heterosexual is a gay man, lesbian, or bisexual woman or man—because these different combinations afford different threats (e.g., unwanted sexual interest) and opportunities (e.g., mutual sexual interest) (Pirlott & Neuberg, 2014). For instance, gay men were disliked by An affordance management approach to social stereotypes 293 heterosexual men but not by heterosexual women—because heterosexual men stereotype gay men as affording unwanted sexual interest whereas heterosexual women stereotype gay men as affording mutual sexual disinterest; bisexual women were liked by heterosexual men but disliked by heterosexual women—because heterosexual men stereotype bisexual women as affording wanted sexual interest whereas heterosexual women stereotype bisexual women as affording unwanted sexual interest. Such nuances raise significant challenges to approaches to studying sexual prejudices that view sexual minorities simply as outgroups or deviants eliciting general negativity from the heterosexual majority. In a similar vein, most research on overweight and obesity stigma has tended to share the implicit assumptions that perceivers view all fat as “bad” (and thus stigmatize people who have “too much” of it) and that perceivers view all fat as “the same” (and thus stigmatize people with overweight and obesity similarly regardless of where on the body that fat is stored). Yet, we have seen that qualitatively different fats serve different functions and reside on different parts of the body, meaning that different body shapes—even controlling for amount of fat—have different and very specific affordance implications for perceivers. Indeed, as seen in the research reported here, the trait stereotypes and affective reactions to people with different shapes can vary greatly—with some fat even being seen as good (e.g., “dad bod” fat on 30-somethings for inferences of fathering quality). Social perceivers actually stereotype people with overweight and obesity in quite nuanced ways—and in ways predicted by the affordance management approach but not other approaches. We have also seen that the affordance management approach lends conceptual clarity to the phenomenon of “invisibility” stigma by hypothesizing— and demonstrating—that invisibility occurs when a target is seen as affording neither an opportunity nor a threat (Neel & Lassetter, 2019). This approach offers novel insights into how and when interpersonal invisibility manifests, with nuanced predictions about the circumstances under which stigmatized groups will sometimes be stereotyped as a threat and at other times be invisible, about which groups may be generally more likely than others to be invisible (or not), and the like. In all, then, we see the value of the affordance management approach in enabling the derivation of nuanced predictions about the contents of stereotypes about a wide range of groups. We have also seen that the affordance management approach highlights the likely significance of several “types” of stereotypes heretofore unrecognized by prominent stereotyping approaches. 294 Steven L. Neuberg et al.

First, recall what we have labeled “within-group” stereotypes. Whereas the stereotyping literature tends to focus on “between-group” stereotypes (i.e., stereotyped differences between groups; e.g., “males are more agentic than women”), in many real-life circumstances people would benefit from possessing within-group stereotypes (i.e., stereotyped differences in traits within a group; e.g., “women are more helpful than they are competitive”), because what we really want to know is the extent to which a specific person we encounter is more likely to afford us opportunities or afford us threats. The affordance management approach suggests yet another nuanced twist on traditional conceptions of stereotypes. Although stereotypes have traditionally been conceptualized and assessed as general traits or characteristics (e.g., “men are competitive”), there are good reasons to believe that people actually hold stereotypes that are “directed”—that represent behavioral inclinations as focused on particular kinds of individuals (e.g., “men are competitive towards men”). After all, from an affordance management perspective, it would be especially important to understand not what a particular individual is likely to do in general, but what that person is likely to do to me (or to someone I care about). Indeed, as we discussed, people do indeed seem to hold directed stereotypes, and in ways that make functional sense (Sng et al., 2020). Also recall our presentation of research that differentiates between “base stereotypes” and “affordance stereotypes” (Pick & Neuberg, 2020). Because to effectively interact with one’s social world it is useful to represent both (1) what others are actually like and (2) what those characteristics might mean for the perceiver, it would make sense to possess stereotypes that differentiate in these ways. Thus, whereas base stereotypes are beliefs about the capacities and behavioral inclinations of groups and their members (e.g., “Mexican immigrants are willing to work hard for low wages”), affordance stereotypes are beliefs about the threats and opportunities those group members may pose (e.g., “Mexican immigrants threaten my economic well-being”). This novel distinction is proving quite useful, with a range of important theoretical and applied implications. For example, it appears that people sharing base stereotypes may nonetheless hold opposing affordance stereotypes; that affordance stereotypes, rather than base stereotypes, predict prejudices and discrimination; and that the effects of personal vulnerabilities (e.g., concern about future job markets) on prejudices and discrimination operate through their effects on affordance stereotypes, not base stereotypes. An affordance management approach to social stereotypes 295

Neither within-group stereotypes (in contrast to between-group stereotypes), directed stereotypes (in contrast to general trait stereotypes), nor the distinction between base stereotypes and affordance stereotypes, have been recognized in the literature—yet each is showing promise for elaborating on our understanding of stereotyping and stereotypes. We opened this chapter by recounting several ways in which stereotyping and stereotypes traditionally stand accused of being “bad.” For those who view stereotyping primarily as a mental shortcut useful for maintaining cognitive laziness, stereotyping is bad because it allows people to (apparently) understand others without having to really think about them as individuals. To those who focus on the fact that stereotypes are (by definition) generalizations about groups and their members, stereotypes are bad because they could never accurately represent any individual’s true characteristics. To those who view stereotypes as serving to justify existing prejudices, or to enhance fragile personal or social identities, stereotypes are bad because… well, because prejudices themselves are bad, and because bolstering one’s own identities by demeaning others is bad, too. We do not deny that stereotyping and stereotypes can lead perceivers astray and produce quite negative and undesirable effects on those stereotyped. We do suggest, however, that—from the perceiver’s perspective— stereotyping and stereotypes are not usually bad, but rather badly misunder- stood. Yes, stereotyping is a cognitively inexpensive way of knowing something about another, but mental efficiency is unlikely to be the function of stereotyping because quick but meaningfully wrong understandings of others are likely to be quite costly given our high levels of interdependence. Rather, the fundamental function of stereotyping is to predict, as accurately as possible given informational and cognitive constraints, the threats and opportunities potentially afforded by those we encounter. Yes, stereotypes are generalizations, but as far as generalizations go, stereotypes as people naturally hold them are pretty specific, intersectional, and nuanced—much more nuanced than researchers have been giving them credit for. (If one’s theory presumes simple stereotypes, one’s methods will rarely be sufficiently well-designed to discover complex stereotypes (Sng et al., 2017).) Indeed, by knowing someone’s sex and age and home ecology and coalitional identity and sexual orientation and body shape and kinship, we already have a relatively fine-tuned guess about whether and how that person might facilitate or hinder many of our most important goals and outcomes. 296 Steven L. Neuberg et al.

Yes, stereotypes can sometimes serve to justify prejudices acquired through other processes or to arbitrarily demean another group for the pur- pose of elevating our own, but that use of stereotypes is unlikely to reflect their most basic function. After all, outside our clever research labs, people rarely stereotype others with whom they are interdependent on arbitrary dimensions. Rather, people stereotype on dimensions that actually help them predict what they care to know about—whether another person will help versus harm, love versus leave, or feed versus steal. This is why people naturally stereotype others in terms of sex, age, coalitional membership, ecology, sexual orientation, body sizes and shapes, and kinship—because these dimensions (especially in intersection with one another) actually carry with them information that enables us to predict how others are likely to behave much better than if we were not to stereotype others at all. In sum, a comprehensive explanation of stereotyping and stereotypes should address why we stereotype people using some dimensions rather than others, and what the specific stereotype content associated with those dimensions is likely to be. The affordance management approach moves us quite a distance toward those aims.

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