Social Stigma and Homelessness: The Limits of Social Change

Facial gestures have been given an increasingly critical role in models of emotion. The biological significance of interindividual transmission of emotional signals is a pivotal assumption for placing the face in a central position in these models. This assumption invited a logical corollary, examined in this article: Face-processing should be highly efficient. Three experiments documented an asymmetry in the processing of emotionally discrepant faces embedded in crowds. The results suggested that threatening faces pop out of crowds, perhaps as a result of a preattentive, parallel search for signals of direct threat. Show more

Distinctions are made between global and specific, personal and social, and trait and state self-esteem, and these are used to structure a review of over 40 studies concerning social identity theory's hypothesis that (a) intergroup discrimination elevates self-esteem and (b) low self-esteem motivates discrimination. It is observed that researchers have tended to employ measures of global personal trait self-esteem in their investigations of this self-esteem hypothesis, and it is argued that measures of specific social state self-esteem are more consistent with social identity theory's assumptions. Although no convincing evidence is found for the self-esteem hypothesis in its full and unqualified form, it is argued that this is due to a lack of specificity in its formulation and it is suggested that a more qualified and specific version of the hypothesis may be more appropriate. Show more