Warmth and Competence as Universal Dimensions of Social Perception: The Stereotype Content Model and the BIAS Map

The Development of an Empirical Model of Mental Health Stigma in Adolescents

BACKGROUND

Research on mental health stigma in adolescents is hampered by a lack of empirical investigation into the theoretical conceptualisation of stigma, as well as by the lack of validated stigma measures. This research aims to develop a model of public stigma toward depression in adolescents and to use this model to empirically examine whether stigma is composed of three separate dimensions (Stereotypes, Prejudice and Discrimination), as is theoretically proposed.

METHOD

Adolescents completed self-report measures assessing their stigmatising responses toward a fictional peer with depression. An exploratory factor analysis (EFA; N=332) was carried out on 58-items, which proposed to measure aspects of stigma. A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA; N=236) was then carried out to evaluate the validity of the observed stigma model. Finally, higher-order CFAs were conducted in order to assess whether the observed model supported the tripartite conceptualisation of stigma.

RESULTS

The EFA returned a seven-factor model of stigma. These factors were designated as Dangerousness, Warmth & Competency, Responsibility, Negative Attributes, Prejudice, Classroom Discrimination and Friendship Discrimination. The CFA supported the goodness-of-fit of this seven-factor model. The higher-order CFAs indicated that these seven factors represented the latent constructs of, Stereotypes, Prejudice and Discrimination, which in turn represented Stigma.

CONCLUSIONS

Overall, results support the tripartite conceptualisation of stigma and suggest that measurements of mental health stigma in adolescents should include assessments of all three dimensions. These results also highlight the importance of establishing valid and reliable measures for assessing stigma in adolescents.

Disagreement About Moral Character Is Linked to Interpersonal Costs

Impressions of moral character are among the most relevant and consequential; yet, people do not always see eye to eye with others about their moral character. Is self-other disagreement about moral character associated with interpersonal costs, and are these costs uniquely associated with moral impressions? To answer these questions, judges ( N = 100) in a community sample rated several acquaintances’ (targets) moral character (e.g., compassion, honesty) and personality and indicated their liking and respect of the target ( N = 587 judge–target pairs) while targets described their own moral character and personality. For most moral impressions, as the discrepancy between judges and targets increased, judges tended to like and respect targets less, particularly when targets enhanced their character relative to their judge. These effects were unique from personality ratings (e.g., agreeableness). Thus, failing to see eye to eye with others about one’s moral character is associated with negative interpersonal outcomes.

Eating disorder public service announcements

Purpose

– Previous studies have documented that exposure to stereotypical information about certain social groups leads to unfavorable perceptions and feelings toward that group. Integrating insights from the mental illness stigma and the social identity perspective literatures, the purpose of this paper is to explore the effects of eating disorder public service announcements (ED PSAs) that employ stigma formats through the lenses of the stereotype content model (SCM) and the Behaviors from Intergroup Affect and Stereotypes (BIAS) Map.

Design/methodology/approach

– The study followed an experimental control group design. Participants were exposed to either a stigmatizing or a non-stigmatizing PSA.

Findings

– Exposure to the stigmatizing PSA resulted in lower perceptions of warmth and competence being attributed to people who have an ED which further predicted greater feelings of contempt toward these individuals. The stigmatizing PSA also directly predicted greater feelings of contempt.

Practical implications

– The findings suggest that using stereotypes about EDs in PSAs aimed at preventing such diseases may elicit perceptions of low warmth and competence, further associated with increased feelings of contempt toward people who have an ED in healthy individuals.

Social implications

– The stereotyping effects of PSAs may reduce the social and emotional support that people with EDs receive and may exacerbate their emotional distress.

Originality/value

– From a theoretical point of view, these results extend the understanding of mental illness stereotypes from an intergroup, SCM and BIAS Map perspective as it applies to EDs. More importantly, this study draws attention to possible unintended consequences of PSAs, a matter that is rarely researched, but that can have severe implications.

Morality stereotyping as a basis of women’s in-group favoritism: An implicit approach

Four studies used three different implicit methods (the BriefIAT, Affect Misattribution Procedure, and Lexical Decision Task) to measure women’s gender stereotypes of violence, strength, competence, trustworthiness, and sociability. Analyses of response latencies in Study 1 ( N = 100) showed that these stereotypes were based more in in-group favoritism than out-group derogation. Consistent with recent evidence that morality is central to the positive evaluation of in-groups, it was the implicit stereotype of women as more trustworthy that best predicted their implicit in-group favoritism across studies, r(249) = .27. Only by examining such specific stereotype content could we assess the moral stereotype of trustworthiness as distinctly tied to in-group favoritism. Alternative analyses of the two global dimensions of group evaluation (i.e., agency/competence and communion/warmth) obscured differences between the more specific stereotypes. Implications for theory and research on stereotype content, as well as the group favoritism of disadvantaged groups, are discussed.

The rich—love them or hate them? Divergent implicit and explicit attitudes toward the wealthy

Adding to a growing body of work on the psychology of social class, the present research examined implicit and explicit attitudes toward rich people, standing out from much previous work that has focused on negative evaluations of people with low socioeconomic status (SES). Across three studies, we found that participants (who typically identified as middle class) implicitly, but not explicitly, favored the rich over the middle class. Although financial resources represent a continuum objectively, attitudes toward the rich seem to be conceptually distinct from evaluations of low-SES people. Additionally, we demonstrated that implicit prorich attitudes uniquely predict leniency on a rich driver who causes a car accident, while explicit attitudes do not predict such judgments. This work expands and clarifies knowledge of implicit wealth attitudes and suggests that implicit prorich attitudes are an important factor in understanding how social class influences daily life.

Perception-Induced Effects of Corporate Social Irresponsibility (CSiR) for Stereotypical and Admired Firms

How do stakeholders react to Corporate Social Irresponsibility (CSiR)? What are the emotional mechanisms and behavioral outcomes following CSiR perception? The psychology of CSR literature has yet to address these important questions and has largely considered CSR and CSiR as the opposite poles of the same continuum. In contrast, we view CSR and CSiR as distinct constructs and theorize about the cognitive (perceptual), emotional, and behavioral effects of CSiR activity on observers (i.e., primary and secondary stakeholders) building on theories of intergroup perception. Specifically, building on the Stereotype Content Model (SCM; Fiske et al., 2002) and the BIAS map (i.e., Behaviors from Intergroup Affect and Stereotypes; Cuddy et al., 2007)—which extends the SCM by predicting behavioral responses—we make predictions on potential stakeholder reactions to CSiR focusing on two practice-relevant cases: (a) a typical for-profit firm that engages in a CSiR activity, (b) an atypical admired firm that engages in CSiR activity.

When It’s Bad to Be Friendly and Smart

Morality, sociability, and competence are distinct dimensions in person perception. We argue that a person’s morality informs us about their likely intentions, whereas their competence and sociability inform us about the likelihood that they will fulfill those intentions. Accordingly, we hypothesized that whereas morality would be considered unconditionally positive, sociability and competence would be highly positive only in moral others, and would be less positive in immoral others. Using exploratory factor analyses, Studies 1a and 1b distinguished evaluations of morality and sociability. Studies 2 to 5 then showed that sociability and competence are evaluated positively contingent on morality—Study 2 demonstrated this phenomenon, while the remaining studies explained it (Study 3), generalized it (Studies 3-5), and ruled out an alternative explanation for it (Study 5). Study 6 showed that the positivity of morality traits is independent of other morality traits. These results support a functionalist account of these dimensions of person perception.

When Money Makes Employees Warm and Bright: Thoughts of New Money Promote Warmth and Competence

Warmth and competence are two important dimensions that facilitate career success (e.g., building relationships, providing novel solutions to problems). We investigated how situational reminders of money affect warmth and competence. Specifically, we propose that reminders of new (vs. used) money increase people's warmth and competence. In five studies of working adults, inducing participants to think about new (vs. used) banknotes promoted creative idea generation (Study 1) (reflecting competence), increased concern for coworkers (Study 2), decreased self-serving behavior (Study 3), and increased helping intentions (Study 5) and behavior (Study 4) (reflecting warmth). Study 4 showed that the effect of priming new money on warmth occurs by activating a norm of social conscientiousness. Our findings suggest that money's appearance can impact problem solving, prorelationship behavior, and perceived norms. We discuss implications for research on money, norm salience, and organizational behavior.

Culture Matters

This article examined cultural variations on the relations of social competence to competence and trustworthiness and the importance of these dimensions in deciding social outcomes. Participants made judgments of personality traits based on inferences from faces of political candidates in the United States and Taiwan. Social competence was distinct from competence but related to trustworthiness among U.S. participants, whereas social competence was related to competence but distinct from trustworthiness among Chinese participants. With respect to winning actual past elections, perceived competence was more important for candidates in the United States than for those in Taiwan, whereas perceived social competence was more important for candidates in Taiwan than for those in the United States. With regard to predicting participants' hypothetical voting choices, competence was valued more among U.S. voters, whereas trustworthiness was favored more among Chinese voters. The role of culture in affecting the function of these dimensions in social perception and judgment is discussed.

Anger and sadness as adaptive emotion expression strategies in response to negative competence and warmth evaluations

Previous literature suggested that anger and sadness may be necessary to restore social bonds in the face of immediate relationship threat. The present research compared the social effectiveness of expressing anger and sadness in response to a negative personal evaluation. Results indicated that target anger in response to a negative competence evaluation, and target sadness in response to a negative warmth evaluation, had the most positive effects on the evaluators' subjectively perceived persuasiveness of the targets' communication (Study 1) and on the subjectively perceived fluency of the interaction by both interaction partners (Study 2). Results are discussed in light of the social functionality of emotion expression and the importance of interpersonal emotion congruency with evaluation content.

Faster but Less Careful Prehension in Presence of High, Rather than Low, Social Status Attendees

Ample evidence attests that social intention, elicited through gestures explicitly signaling a request of communicative intention, affects the patterning of hand movement kinematics. The current study goes beyond the effect of social intention and addresses whether the same action of reaching to grasp an object for placing it in an end target position within or without a monitoring attendee's peripersonal space, can be moulded by pure social factors in general, and by social facilitation in particular. A motion tracking system (Optotrak Certus) was used to record motor acts. We carefully avoided the usage of communicative intention by keeping constant both the visual information and the positional uncertainty of the end target position, while we systematically varied the social status of the attendee (a high, or a low social status) in separated blocks. Only thirty acts performed in the presence of a different social status attendee, revealed a significant change of kinematic parameterization of hand movement, independently of the attendee's distance. The amplitude of peak velocity reached by the hand during the reach-to-grasp and the lift-to-place phase of the movement was larger in the high rather than in the low social status condition. By contrast, the deceleration time of the reach-to-grasp phase and the maximum grasp aperture was smaller in the high rather than in the low social status condition. These results indicated that the hand movement was faster but less carefully shaped in presence of a high, but not of a low social status attendee. This kinematic patterning suggests that being monitored by a high rather than a low social status attendee might lead participants to experience evaluation apprehension that informs the control of motor execution. Motor execution would rely more on feedforward motor control in the presence of a high social status human attendee, vs. feedback motor control, in the presence of a low social status attendee.

A double whammy effect of ethnicity and gender on consumer responses to management level service failures

Purpose

– Existing research on demographic stereotypes of employees suggests that ethnicity and gender are important determinants of consumer perceptions and behaviors. Based on the Stereotype Content Model and the Role Congruity Theory, the purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of ethnicity and gender stereotypes on management-level service failures in a US context.

Design/methodology/approach

– Adopting a 2 (ethnicity: Caucasian vs Hispanic) × 2 (gender: male vs female) between-subjects design, two studies were conducted with US consumers to test whether a double whammy effect of ethnicity and gender exists for management-level, but not line-level, service failures.

Findings

– The results of this study suggest that Hispanic female managers suffer from a double whammy effect due to ethnic and gender-based stereotyping in the USA. Furthermore, the findings indicate that the serial mediation via competence perceptions and blame attributions are the underlying psychological mechanism of this effect. As predicted, occupational status functions as a boundary factor to the double whammy effect.

Originality/value

– The findings of this paper contribute to the service management literature by examining the role of demographic characteristics in influencing US consumers’ responses to management-level service failures.

Both harmful and (some) helpful behaviours from others are associated with increased expression of schizotypal traits

Negative treatment from others is related to elevated levels of trait schizotypy, signifying increased risk for psychosis, but associations with helpful behaviour have been much less studied. Using the Stereotype Content Model we tested the hypothesis that passive and active forms of help would be associated with increased and decreased expression of schizotypy, respectively. Schizotypal traits were assessed in students (N=631) using positive (Perceptual Aberration) and negative (Social Anhedonia) subscales of the Wisconsin Schizotypy Scales-Brief. Experiences of active (intentional) and passive (less deliberative) harm and help were assessed with the Behaviour from Intergroup Affect and Stereotypes Treatment Scale. As predicted, the results showed that experiences of passive help from others were associated with a 2-3 fold increase in scores on schizotypy scales, whilst reports of active help tended to be associated with a decrease in scores on these scales. Results also showed that increased reports of active and passive harm were associated with elevated scores on negative and positive schizotypy subscales, consistent with prior research. These findings, bridging research on social stereotyping and schizotypal personality, challenge the assumption that helpful behaviour from others is always beneficial for individuals with schizotypal traits who are at increased risk for psychosis.

Beyond Dominance and Competence: A Moral Virtue Theory of Status Attainment

Recognition has grown that moral behavior (e.g., generosity) plays a role in status attainment, yet it remains unclear how, why, and when demonstrating moral characteristics enhances status. Drawing on philosophy, anthropology, psychology, and organizational behavior, I critically review a third route to attaining status: virtue, and propose a moral virtue theory of status attainment to provide a generalized account of the role of morality in status attainment. The moral virtue theory posits that acts of virtue elicit feelings of warmth and admiration (for virtue), and willing deference, toward the virtuous actor. I further consider how the scope and priority of moralities and virtues endorsed by a moral community are bound by culture and social class to affect which moral characteristics enhance status. I end by outlining an agenda for future research into the role of virtue in status attainment.

Specific emotions as mediators of the effect of intergroup contact on prejudice: findings across multiple participant and target groups

Emotions are increasingly being recognised as important aspects of prejudice and intergroup behaviour. Specifically, emotional mediators play a key role in the process by which intergroup contact reduces prejudice towards outgroups. However, which particular emotions are most important for prejudice reduction, as well as the consistency and generality of emotion-prejudice relations across different in-group-out-group relations, remain uncertain. To address these issues, in Study 1 we examined six distinct positive and negative emotions as mediators of the contact-prejudice relations using representative samples of U.S. White, Black, and Asian American respondents (N = 639). Admiration and anger (but not other emotions) were significant mediators of the effects of previous contact on prejudice, consistently across different perceiver and target ethnic groups. Study 2 examined the same relations with student participants and gay men as the out-group. Admiration and disgust mediated the effect of past contact on attitude. The findings confirm that not only negative emotions (anger or disgust, based on the specific types of threat perceived to be posed by an out-group), but also positive, status- and esteem-related emotions (admiration) mediate effects of contact on prejudice, robustly across several different respondent and target groups.

Once Dishonest, Always Dishonest? The Impact of Perceived Pervasiveness of Moral Evaluations of the Self on Motivation to Restore a Moral Reputation

Four studies specify how moral evaluations of the self regulate behavior aimed at restoring a moral reputation. We propose that people care about evaluations of themselves as moral or immoral because these are perceived as more consequential than other types of information. Therefore people are more inclined to restore their image after being negatively evaluated in terms of morality rather than competence. Studies 1 and 2 revealed that moral information was perceived as having a more enduring impact on one’s reputation, and was more strongly related to anticipate intra-group respect and self-views, than competence and sociability information. This perceived pervasiveness of moral (vs. competence) evaluations mediated intentions to justify and explain one’s behavior (Study 3). Study 4 finally showed that being seen as lacking in morality elicited threat and coping responses, which induced subsequent tendencies to repair one’s moral reputation.

The Role of Affective and Cognitive Individual Differences in Social Perception

Three studies explored the connection between social perception processes and individual differences in the use of affective and cognitive information in relation to attitudes. Study 1 revealed that individuals high in need for affect (NFA) accentuated differences in evaluations of warm and cold traits, whereas individuals high in need for cognition (NFC) accentuated differences in evaluations of competent and incompetent traits. Study 2 revealed that individual differences in NFA predicted liking of warm or cold targets, whereas individual differences in NFC predicted perceptions of competent or incompetent targets. Furthermore, the effects of NFA and NFC were independent of structural bases and meta-bases of attitudes. Study 3 revealed that differences in the evaluation of warm and cold traits mediated the effects of NFA and NFC on liking of targets. The implications for social perception processes and for individual differences in affect-cognition are discussed.

Social Hostility in Soccer and Beyond

Social hostility is seldom expressed overtly. More often than not, individuals try to get their hostile message across without risking violent altercations. However, subtle and relatively covert hostility is not easy to research. We suggest a novel way with the SoMi paradigm, a social decision making task that offers participants the opportunity to be socially mindful or socially hostile by leaving or limiting choice to others. Sampling a general population we find that, relative to friends and strangers, foes are indeed met with greater social hostility (Study 1). Focusing on the highly competitive environment of youth soccer, we find that rival team members elicit social hostility, whereas teammates elicit social mindfulness (Study 2). We conclude that social mindfulness and social hostility play a subtle role in the dynamics of interpersonal and/or intergroup relationships, in which leaving or limiting choice is one of the subtle ways to express benevolent versus hostile intentions; the SoMi paradigm may thus be helpful in identifying which way the ball rolls.

If You Are Old and Do Not Want to Fall into The Traditional Stereotype--Be Physically Active!

BACKGROUND/STUDY CONTEXT: Based on the stereotype content model and the behaviors from intergroup affect and stereotypes map (Cuddy et al., 2008; Advances in experimental social psychology [Vol. 40, pp. 61-149], New York: Academic Press), we examined whether being physically active may challenge the traditional stereotypes related to older adults.

METHODS

We compared how 94 participants (M(age) = 24.48 years, SD = 7.15 years) judged one of three target groups (older adults in general, physically active older adults, and socially active older adults), with regard to perceived status and competition, warmth and competence judgments, emotional and behavioral reactions.

RESULTS

Results showed that being physically active was associated with higher status and competence. Physically active older adults were specifically viewed as an admired group eliciting both active (helping) and passive facilitation (associating) tendencies.

CONCLUSION

Beyond the well-known health perspective related to the regular participation of older adults in physical activity, the present results open a social optimistic perspective, in which being physically active seems a promising way to challenge the widespread and resistant stereotype content of older people commonly perpetuated.

Do we know what we are asking? Individual and group cognitive interviews1

The paper deals with cognitive interview, a method for pre-testing survey questions that is used in pilot testing to develop new measures and/or adapt ones in foreign languages. The aim is to explore the usefulness of the method by looking at two questionnaires measuring anti-Roma prejudice. The first, the Stereotype Content Model (SCM), contains questions that are dominantly used to test two dimensions of social perceptions of various groups: warmth and competence. The second, Interventions for Reducing Prejudice against Stigmatized Minorities (INTERMIN) consists of the items most frequently used in contact research to measure attitudes, social distance, anxiety, trust and behavioural intentions towards outgroups. Two rounds of cognitive interviews were held on both questionnaires to verbally evaluate participants’ understanding and/or interpretation of the draft questions. The first round was attended by university students, while the second round (with improved versions of the questionnaires) was done with high school students, as they are the target group for planned interventions based on the contact paradigm. The paper explains the problems/difficulties the participants had answering some of the questions and our attempts at improving the questionnaires. The problems can be grouped around six issues: The first two deal with the strategies participants used to answer our questions – whom exactly did they have in mind when answering the questionnaires and whose viewpoint did they represent in their answers. The next four problems are around nuances in the formulations of our questions and generally have to do with how the participants interpreted our questions – they concern assumptions that distinct items were logically interconnected, the period of time and locality referred to in our questions, translation and transferability of meanings from one language to another and double negation.

Winners, Losers, Insiders, and Outsiders: Comparing Hierometer and Sociometer Theories of Self-Regard

What evolutionary function does self-regard serve? Hierometer theory, introduced here, provides one answer: it helps individuals navigate status hierarchies, which feature zero-sum contests that can be lost as well as won. In particular, self-regard tracks social status to regulate behavioral assertiveness, augmenting or diminishing it to optimize performance in such contests. Hierometer theory also offers a conceptual counterpoint that helps resolve ambiguities in sociometer theory, which offers a complementary account of self-regard’s evolutionary function. In two large-scale cross-sectional studies, we operationalized theoretically relevant variables at three distinct levels of analysis, namely, social (relations: status, inclusion), psychological (self-regard: self-esteem, narcissism), and behavioral (strategy: assertiveness, affiliativeness). Correlational and mediational analyses consistently supported hierometer theory, but offered only mixed support for sociometer theory, including when controlling for confounding constructs (anxiety, depression). We interpret our results in terms of a broader agency-communion framework.

Impressive Words: Linguistic Predictors of Public Approval of the U.S. Congress

What type of language makes the most positive impression within a professional setting? Is competent/agentic language or warm/communal language more effective at eliciting social approval? We examined this basic social cognitive question in a real world context using a “big data” approach—the recent record-low levels of public approval of the U.S. Congress. Using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC), we text analyzed all 123+ million words spoken by members of the U.S. House of Representatives during floor debates between 1996 and 2014 and compared their usage of various classes of words to their public approval ratings over the same time period. We found that neither agentic nor communal language positively predicted public approval. However, this may be because communion combines two disparate social motives (belonging and helping). A follow-up analysis found that the helping form of communion positively predicted public approval, and did so more strongly than did agentic language. Next, we conducted an exploratory analysis, examining which of the 63 standard LIWC categories predict public approval. We found that the public approval of Congress was highest when politicians used tentative language, expressed both positive emotion and anxiety, and used human words, numbers, prepositions, numbers, and avoided conjunctions and the use of second-person pronouns. These results highlight the widespread primacy of warmth over competence as the primary dimensions of social cognition.

Neural evidence that three dimensions organize mental state representation: Rationality, social impact, and valence

How do people understand the minds of others? Existing psychological theories have suggested a number of dimensions that perceivers could use to make sense of others' internal mental states. However, it remains unclear which of these dimensions, if any, the brain spontaneously uses when we think about others. The present study used multivoxel pattern analysis (MVPA) of neuroimaging data to identify the primary organizing principles of social cognition. We derived four unique dimensions of mental state representation from existing psychological theories and used functional magnetic resonance imaging to test whether these dimensions organize the neural encoding of others' mental states. MVPA revealed that three such dimensions could predict neural patterns within the medial prefrontal and parietal cortices, temporoparietal junction, and anterior temporal lobes during social thought: rationality, social impact, and valence. These results suggest that these dimensions serve as organizing principles for our understanding of other people.

Gender, Race, and Age: The Content of Compound Stereotypes Across the Life Span

While stereotypes about gender, race, and age (particularly old age) have been studied independently, few have examined the content of compound stereotypes that consider the intersection of gender, race, and age. Using a within-subjects design, we examined stereotypes as a function of target gender (male, female), race (Black, White), and age across the life span (adolescent, young adult, middle-aged, young-old, and old-old). Participants rated 20 target groups on 10 attributes representative of either an agentic (e.g., ambitious) or communal (e.g., considerate) orientation. Participants were presented only with categorical information (e.g., Black, 85-year-old, males), and ordering of categorical information and target groups was counterbalanced across participants. We hypothesized differential effects of target gender and race as a function of age. Multivariate analyses of variance on each attribute revealed significant main effects that supported traditional stereotype research, but significant interactions revealed a more complicated picture. Overall, results showed that while gender stereotypes about agency and communion generally hold up across the life span, they are more applicable to White than Black targets. Results also supported the notion that we hold unique stereotypes based on multiple social categories rather than simply perceiving one social category as more salient than another, which was best exemplified in the case of Black female targets that were less likely to be perceived in gender stereotypic ways across the life span. We suggest stereotype research needs to shift to accommodate for the complexity and diversity of real people.

Sometimes more competent, but always less warm: Perceptions of biologically oriented mental-health clinicians

BACKGROUND AND AIMS

Biological conceptualizations of psychopathology are ascendant, including among mental-health clinicians. However, it is unknown how this might affect people's perceptions of clinicians, which in turn could have considerable public-health implications. The present studies sought to address this issue.

METHODS

In the present research, participants imagined that they or their loved ones were suffering from a mental disorder and then rated their perceptions of one clinician espousing the view that 'mental disorders are brain diseases' and another describing them as 'disorders of thoughts and emotions'.

RESULTS

Biologically oriented clinicians were perceived as more competent and effective only when the disorder in question was judged to be biologically caused. Otherwise, there was no significant difference in perceived competence, and biologically oriented clinicians were rated less effective. Regardless, all participants perceived the biologically oriented clinician as significantly less warm on average than the psychosocially oriented clinician.

CONCLUSION

These findings may have important clinical implications for the crucial therapeutic alliance between therapists and patients.

Influence of warmth and competence on the promotion of safe in-group selection: Stereotype content model and social categorization of faces

Categorizing an individual as a friend or foe plays a pivotal role in navigating the social world. According to the stereotype content model (SCM), social perception relies on two fundamental dimensions, warmth and competence, which allow us to process the intentions of others and their ability to enact those intentions, respectively. Social cognition research indicates that, in categorization tasks, people tend to classify other individuals as more likely to belong to the out-group than the in-group (in-group overexclusion effect, IOE) when lacking diagnostic information, probably with the aim of protecting in-group integrity. Here, we explored the role of warmth and competence in group-membership decisions by testing 62 participants in a social-categorization task consisting of 150 neutral faces. We assessed whether (a) warmth and competence ratings could predict the in-group/out-group categorization, and (b) the reliance on these two dimensions differed in low-IOE versus high-IOE participants. Data showed that high ratings of warmth and competence were necessary to categorize a face as in-group. Moreover, while low-IOE participants relied on warmth, high-IOE participants relied on competence. This finding suggests that the proneness to include/exclude unknown identities in/from one's own in-group is related to individual differences in the reliance on SCM social dimensions. Furthermore, the primacy of the warmth effect seems not to represent a universal phenomenon adopted in the context of social evaluation.

Near or far? It depends on my impression: moral information and spatial behavior in virtual interactions

Near body distance is a key component of action and social interaction. Recent research has shown that peripersonal space (reachability-distance for acting with objects) and interpersonal space (comfort-distance for interacting with people) share common mechanisms and reflect the social valence of stimuli. The social psychological literature has demonstrated that information about morality is crucial because it affects impression formation and the intention to approach-avoid others. Here we explore whether peripersonal/interpersonal spaces are modulated by moral information. Thirty-six participants interacted with male/female virtual confederates described by moral/immoral/neutral sentences. The modulation of body space was measured by reachability-distance and comfort-distance while participants stood still or walked toward virtual confederates. Results showed that distance expanded with immorally described confederates and contracted with morally described confederates. This pattern was present in both spaces, although it was stronger in comfort-distance. Consistent with an embodied cognition approach, the findings suggest that high-level socio-cognitive processes are linked to sensorimotor-spatial processes.

A Gender Bias in the Attribution of Creativity

We propose that the propensity to think creatively tends to be associated with independence and self-direction—qualities generally ascribed to men—so that men are often perceived to be more creative than women. In two experiments, we found that “outside the box” creativity is more strongly associated with stereotypically masculine characteristics (e.g., daring and self-reliance) than with stereotypically feminine characteristics (e.g., cooperativeness and supportiveness; Study 1) and that a man is ascribed more creativity than a woman when they produce identical output (Study 2). Analyzing archival data, we found that men’s ideas are evaluated as more ingenious than women’s ideas (Study 3) and that female executives are stereotyped as less innovative than their male counterparts when evaluated by their supervisors (Study 4). Finally, we observed that stereotypically masculine behavior enhances a man’s perceived creativity, whereas identical behavior does not enhance a woman’s perceived creativity (Study 5). This boost in men’s perceived creativity is mediated by attributions of agency, not competence, and predicts perceptions of reward deservingness.

Mischaracterizing social psychology to support the laudable goal of increasing its political diversity

Duarte et al.'s arguments for increasing political diversity in social psychology are based on mischaracterizations of social psychology as fundamentally flawed in understanding stereotype accuracy and the effects of attitudes on information processing. I correct their misunderstandings while agreeing with their view that political diversity, along with other forms of diversity, stands to benefit social psychology.