magazine issue 9 2008 / Issue 8

Social Judgment: Warmth and Competence are Universal Dimensions

• written by Abdolhossein Abdollahi & Susan Fiske
• edited by Suzanne van Gils

Of course, people and situations make a difference. Women and people from so-called collectivist cultures (e.g., China or Japan) are even more sensitive to warmth than competence (Abele, 2003). What’s more, some situations may lead us to attend especially to others’ warmth than their skills—or vice versa. Given a specific context, people may understand some social behaviors either in terms of warmth or competence (e.g., rushing out of a meeting could be interpreted either as helping a colleague or abandoning a meeting). Contexts also may be viewed from one’s own or others’ perspectives, and this too matters (Wojciszke, 1994). When actions are framed from one’s own perspective, undergraduates interpret them in terms ofcompetence, and when the same actions are framed from an other’s perspective, these undergraduates make sense of the other based on the warmth dimension. Specifically, in this study participants were asked to assume playing the role of either an actor or observer and subsequently received descriptions of a series of actions. The actions could be interpreted both as competent and moral. For example, they read that an employee ingratiated herself with her boss but did it in such an obvious way that it angered the boss. Then participants were to judge this action from the employee (the actor) or the boss (the observer) and to write down why they judged the way they did. The results indicated that when participants were playing the role of an actor, they tended to focus on warmth, and when they were playing the role of an observer, the competence information was more salient to them.

Judging social groups based on warmth and competence

In the warmth-competence space, in most societies studied so far, what appears is an ingroup (a person’s own group, which forms the person’s social identity) and three outgroups (a group with which a person does not identify). The ingroup is usually rated as both warm and competent, but the outgroups are rated as lacking either warmth or competence or both. For example, in the USA, at the present time, middle-class people, Christian people, heterosexual people, and US citizens all are societalingroups. People rate these groups as high on both warmth and competence, and they express pride and admiration for them (Cuddy et al., 2007; Fiske, Xu, Cuddy, & Glick, 1999; Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, & Xu 2002). 

On the other hand, poor white people, poor black people, welfare recipients, homeless people, drug addicts, and undocumented migrants are societal outgroups (Cuddy, Fiske, & Glick, in press; Fiske et al. 1999; Fiske et al. 2002; Lee & Fiske, 2006). These groups reportedly elicit contempt and disgust more than all other groups. These extreme outgroups are the lowest of the low, in people’s minds, and seen as less human than other groups, according to brain scans of people viewing photographs of people from these groups (Harris & Fiske, 2006). 
Most of the time, however, people are more moderate and forgiving toward outgroups. People tend to perceive members of mostoutgroups as high on one dimension (e.g., warmth) and low on another (e.g., competence). For example, in the US, people who are older, physically-disabled or mentally-disabled are viewed as warm but incompetent. These groups elicit pity and sympathy (Cuddy, Fiske, Kwan, Glick, Demoulin, et al., in press; Fiske et al. 1999, 2002; Fiske & Cuddy, 2006). Other groups are viewed as competent but cold and untrustworthy. In the US, these currently include rich people, Asian people, Jewish people, female professionals, and minority professionals. These groups elicit envy and jealousy more than other groups. This pattern appears in most countries, and generalizes to outgroups’ –subgroups, such as different kinds of women (warm-incompetent homemakers but cold-competent feminists) and different kinds of gay men (warm-incompetent ‘clowns’ but cold-competent professionals).