Attitudes toward pregnant women: a test of the evolutionary social psychological perspective

Evolutionary psychologists would argue that negative attitudes toward pregnant women exist only when these women threaten optimal reproduction. Yet, other research demonstrates that social norm violations create negative attitudes toward pregnant women even when reproduction is not threatened. Therefore, the goal of the current research was to examine whether social norms influence attitudes toward pregnant women from an evolutionary psychology account by presenting participants with one of four vignettes describing a target woman with optimal reproductive fitness using a 2 (Participant Gender: Women, Men) x 2 (Pregnancy Status of the Target: Pregnant, Not- Pregnant), x 2 (Target Injunctive Norm Adherence: Adheres, Violates) fully\ between subjects design. Results demonstrated that norm adherence influences attitudes toward pregnant women and that participant gender (all heterosexual) moderates the norm adherence influence. These results show that social information necessarily interacts with the affordance management system to generate varied attitudes toward pregnant women not threatening optimal reproduction.