Because, as with most of our day-to-day perceptions, the big deal about breasts is highly context-dependent. It isn't just about . What do I mean? Allow me a brief story to demonstrate...

The mother of my best friend growing up once told me a tale of the outrage she had provoked by breastfeeding one of her children in public. Specifically, the members of the country club to which she belonged apparently didn't take too kindly to her infant son's need to eat, responding to her breastfeeding with dirty looks, rebukes, and draconian policy changes that were ultimately enough to convince her and her husband to resign from the club.

Get it? Breastfeeding... chicken breast... ah, country club ...

Decades later, as many women I know can attest, such negative reaction to breastfeeding is hardly extinct. The question of why? is an interesting one worthy of a blog post in and of itself. But the focus of this post is on an intriguing possibility that often gets lost in the debate over the breastfeeding policies of restaurants, airlines, Facebook, and others: does breastfeeding change the type of person others believe you to be?

A series of research studies in the July issue of and Social Psychology Bulletin provides a clear and disconcerting answer: yes.

In one version of the study, the tagline for the skin cream was specifically about breastfeeding, describing the product as intended for women "to soothe chaffed nipples after nursing." Other conditions used similar, breast-specific language but not about breastfeeding, stating instead that the product was for joggers to use after exercise or for women to use "before ."

After viewing one of these ads, respondents were asked a series of questions about the woman endorsing the cream. Though everyone looked at a photo of the same sweatshirt-wearing woman, those who saw the breastfeeding tagline rated the woman in the ad as less generally competent and less likely to experience success "in the working world."

Similar results emerged in another study in which participants overheard a woman (who was actually in cahoots with the researchers) checking her cell phone voice mail and listening to a message that mentioned her need to go home to breastfeed before going out for the evening.

Keep in mind, in these studies respondents didn't even have to see the actual breastfeeding to form these negative impressions and expectations about the woman in question. Simply reading an tagline or overhearing a voice mail was enough.

And it wasn't just any mention of breasts that had these effects–the results were specific to breastfeeding. In the magazine ad study, for example, comparably negative stereotypes did not emerge when breasts were referenced in an exercise or sexual context.

Actually, strike that–this conclusion doesn't do the story justice. The real take-home? We still have a long way to go when it comes to how we react and respond to breastfeeding. And the problem may be worse than you suspected: breastfeeding actually changes people's more global perceptions of an individual's competence and capability. That's a sad legacy for a practice that has benefited so many of us.

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Sam Sommers is a social psychologist at Tufts University in Medford, MA. His first book, Situations Matter: Understanding How Context Transforms Your World, will be published by Riverhead Books (Penguin) in December 2011. You can follow him on Facebook here and on Twitter here. Book trailer video below: