Signaling Sizeism

Pervasive stigma against fat people and evidence for its harmful health consequences highlight the need for a better understanding of people’s first-hand experiences of navigating the world with a stigmatized body size. Drawing on social identity threat theory, we conducted a mixed-method study with a qualitative examination of threat and safety cues as experienced by people who self-identify as overweight. In an online survey, 48 people who self-identified as overweight responded to open-ended prompts to describe how situational features of a setting signal weight-based threat and safety to them. Using thematic analysis, we identified several themes that characterized threat and safety cues. Particularly notable were inverse themes, such as structural exclusion versus structural accommodation and homogeneity of others versus general diversity, that highlighted how physical features of, and the people in, an environment positively or negatively impact fat people’s psychological experience. Moreover, we conducted exploratory deductive coding using a recent taxonomy of safety cues developed by Kruk and Matsick (in press). Results highlighted how weight-based stigma parallels and diverges from other cues of identity safety (e.g., by gender or race/ethnicity). We suggest knowledge about situational cues can inform interventions to mitigate threat and promote safety among both fat people and other stigmatized groups.

Why Perpetrators and Innocent Victims are Sometimes Harshly judged? Belief in a Just World and Other Situational Determinants

Although Belief in a Just World (BJW) has positive influences on well-being, the attempts to maintain these beliefs may give rise to awry judgments in contexts of harm. In a scenario-based study, we examined the associations of general belief in a just world (GBJW) with BJW maintenance strategies, including victim blaming, victim derogation, perpetrator demonization, and compensation. We hypothesized that because these harsh judgments about victims and offenders along with compensation are used as defensive mechanisms against threats to BJW, using a specific strategy depends on the availability of each strategy and the level of a person’s GBJW. Thus, we also tested whether GBJW and situational cues for victim’s respectability and perpetrator’s evilness have interaction effects on various strategies to defend BJW. By manipulating the characteristics of the victim (professor vs. car dealer) and offender (with evilness cues vs. without evilness cues) in a crime scenario, the interaction effects on judgments about victims and perpetrators as well as compensation were investigated. The results indicated that while GBJW interacted with victim’s respectability and perpetrator’s evilness to predict demonization and derogation, there was no three-way interaction and two-way interaction effects between victim’s respectability and perpetrator’s evilness on the four BJW-maintenance strategies. Taken together, our findings highlight the nuanced effects of just world beliefs on how people react to and make sense of violent incidents.

The willing successor: an exploration of grit and situational cues in family firms

PurposeThis conceptual paper explores how the activation of the individual-level trait grit can explain variance in successor willingness to take over leadership of the family firm.Design/methodology/approachDrawing from trait activation and situation strength theories, the authors develop a framework to examine the interactions of the two dimensions of grit (passion and perseverance) on the successor's willingness to take control of the family firm.FindingsThe authors identify how the grit dimensions would interact with the situational cues present during the succession process to predict the successor's willingness to take control of the family firm and offer testable propositions to guide future empirical work.Originality/valueThe authors help to address the growing need for additional microfoundational family firm research by drawing insights from organizational behavior theories and personality research and apply them to the family firm succession process.

Attitude Moralization Within Polarized Contexts: An Emotional Value-Protective Response to Dyadic Harm Cues

Polarization about societal issues involves attitudinal conflict, but we know little about how such conflict transforms into moral conflict. Integrating insights on polarization and psychological value protection, we propose a model that predicts when and how attitude moralization (i.e., when attitudes become grounded in core values) may be triggered and develops within polarized contexts. We tested this model in three experiments (total N = 823) in the context of the polarized Zwarte Piet (blackface) debate in the Netherlands. Specifically, we tested the hypotheses that (a) situational cues to dyadic harm in this context (i.e., an outgroup that is perceived as intentionally inflicting harm onto innocent victims) trigger individuals to moralize their relevant attitude, because of (b) emotional value-protective responses. Findings supported both hypotheses across different regional contexts, suggesting that attitude moralization can emerge within polarized contexts when people are exposed to actions by attitudinal opponents perceived as causing dyadic harm.

Sanctions, Perceptions, and Crime

The interplay of sanctions, perceptions, and crime has special significance in criminology and is central to a long tradition of perceptual deterrence research as well as to more recent scholarship on crime decision-making. This article seeks to review this body of research as it pertains to three basic questions. First, are people's perceptions of punishment accurate? The evidence indicates that people are generally but imperfectly aware of punishments allowed under the law but are nevertheless sensitive to changes in enforcement, especially of behaviors that are personally relevant. Second, does potential apprehension affect people's perceived risk and behavior when faced with a criminal opportunity? A highly varied body of literature supports the conclusion that perceptions are sensitive to situational cues and that behavior is sensitive to perceived risk, but these links can be weakened when individuals are in emotionally or socially charged situations. Third, do people revise their risk perceptions in response to crime and punishment experiences? Studies of perceptual change support the contention that people systematically update their perceptions based on their own and others’ experiences with crime and punishment. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Criminology, Volume 5 is January 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Situating desire: Situational cues increase desire for food through eating simulations

How do situations influence food desire? Although eating typically occurs in rich background situations, research on food desire often focuses on the properties of foods and consumers, rather than on the situations in which eating takes place. Here, we take a grounded cognition perspective and suggest that a situation that is congruent with consuming a food increases simulations of eating it, which, in turn, affect desire, and the expected and actual liking of the food. We tested this idea in four pre-registered experiments (N = 524). Participants processed an image of a food presented in a congruent situation, an incongruent situation, or no background situation. Compared to the incongruent situation, the congruent situation increased expected liking of the food and desire, and this was partially or fully mediated by eating simulations. The congruent situation also increased salivation, a physiological indicator of preparing to eat. However, there was only weak and indirect evidence for congruence effects on actual liking of the food when tasted. These findings show that situational cues can affect desire for food through eating simulations. Thus, background situations play an important but understudied role in human food desires. We address implications for research using food images, and for applications to promote healthy and sustainable eating behaviour.

Verbal framing and statistical patterns influence children's attributions to situational, but not personal, causes for behavior

Adults from Western cultures attribute others’ behavior to personal causes more readily than situational causes; however, little research has explored the developmental origins of this attributional bias. Research has shown that children can use both the statistical patterns present in observed behavior, as well as the verbal framing of the behaviors, to infer personal causes. However, research has not explored whether children also use these factors to infer situational causes. The present study examined the impacts of statistical patterns and verbal framing on four- and six-year-old children’s (n = 218) attributions to personal and situational causes for behavior, as assessed by their explanations for characters’ interactions with toys. In a factorial design the statistical pattern of characters’ behaviors suggested either a personal or situational cause (or neither), and the experimenter’s verbal framing of the behaviors suggested either a personal or situational cause (or neither). Across age groups, children showed a bias toward providing personal explanations. Both statistical pattern and verbal framing influenced causal attributions, but both impacts were asymmetric such that situational cues increased situational explanations relative to neutral cues, but there was no difference in children’s explanations following personal and neutral cues. These results suggest that verbal framing and statistical patterns impact children’s developing social causal attributions, specifically with respect to situational causes, and also that a personal attribution bias emerges early in development.