I'm interested in the characteristics and behaviors we value in others and in our reactions to those who fail to display them.  My colleagues and I suggest that human social preferences are far from arbitrary, but instead significantly (but imperfectly) constrained by our evolved nature as ultrasocial animals.   In light of the extensiveness of human social interdependence and group investment, we believe that people value individuals and groups seen as facilitating effective ingroup functioning and stigmatize those seen as threatening it.

Based on a consideration of group processes and structures fundamental to group success, I derive preliminary taxonomies of (1) specific social threats to which people are generally attuned, and (2) specific emotional and behavioral responses these threats elicit.  I then illustrate several implications of this functionalist framework with data from two ongoing investigations:  The first explores the connections between the specific social threats people seek to avoid and the particular personality traits people value and devalue.  The second explores the connections between the threats people believe certain individuals and groups pose and the specific emotional reactions these others elicit; this line of research also addresses the hypothesis that the concept of prejudice-as-general-attitude masks the highly textured nature of intragroup and intergroup affect.  Finally, I note the integrative potential of the proposed framework, and its implications for better understanding social phenomena ranging from self-presentation and low-level social cognition, on the one hand, to formal religious and legal practices, on the other.