The Affordance Management/Fundamental Motive Affective-Behavioral Model of LGB Prejudice

The title of this blog post probably makes no sense if you haven’t taken social psychology or evolutionary psychology, but don’t worry. The basic idea is composed of smaller parts, and if you understand each one, you should have no issue understanding how they all fit together. So, let’s start with the first part.

Affordance management is a theory which states that in our environment and in our interactions with others, there are often threats or opportunities present (affordances) which we can perceive and choose to take advantage of or avoid (Gibson, 1977). Examples of such opportunities might include being able to get a promotion by becoming friendly with your new boss or avoiding a threat by not eating spoiled seafood. Some things are more ambiguous, and they can be both a threat and an opportunity depending on the situation. For example, a teacher approaching might be a threat if you are concerned about getting in trouble, but it might be beneficial if you need help with a problem.

Fundamental motives are somewhat related to affordances, in that they’re things you want to get or avoid for the sake of your own wellbeing. They are general, overarching goals that are essential to survival and propagation of the human species. Pirlott and Cook (2018) list six fundamental motives which they use in their model, including “finding and retaining mates, parenting, acquiring and maintaining status, avoiding disease, affiliating socially (which we argue includes successfully facilitating ingroup functioning), and protecting oneself”.

In the video below, there are multiple fundamental goals for the leopards: gaining resources (food), protecting themselves from danger, and parenting the young. As you can see, these fundamental goals may overlap or contradict themselves.

The model that Pirlott and Cook created specifically applies to prejudice/discrimination directed towards LGB people. For the sake of the following explanation, it may also be useful to review the Terminology section of this website and note that prejudice refers to an attitude or feeling towards a group of people, whereas discrimination refers specifically to actions taken against a group of people. Here, the line is drawn between affect (attitude) and behavior (action).

This model basically states that when a heterosexual individual encounters an LGB individual, what kind of response they have depends on what kind of fundamental goal is relevant in their situation, and what kind of threat/opportunity the LGB individual stereotypically poses in relation to the attainment of that goal. Their emotional response depends upon these processes and is unique depending on the goal being activated- and it often takes the form of prejudice. That emotional response can then be expressed behaviorally, where they prevent the threat or take the opportunity- which can be expressed as discrimination. For example, parenting is one of the fundamental motives listed by Pirlott and Cook (2018). They predict that when a heterosexual parent encounters a gay or bisexual man or woman (especially if they are the same gender as the child), a common stereotype about LGB individuals being child molesters is activated in their minds, and they react to LGB individuals with “moral disgust” and “anger” which in turns leads to them shunning the LGB individual or causing them harm. This stereotype is generally untrue (as will be discussed in another post), yet it works together with psychological processes to elicit actual behavioral responses that can result in a lot of damage. This model is interesting because while ingroup/outgroup dynamics can still be applied to it, it also works for dynamics within groups themselves. It is important to realize that prejudice may have multiple motivations, and that the people who have it often feel that what they are doing, or feeling is justified. However, it is also important to recognize that these feelings and behaviors often have a faulty foundation built on stereotypes which may or may not be true of any one individual.