Warmth and Competence

Do You Perceive Warm Person as Less Competent?

What’s more important to you, warmth or competence?
Social psychologist Amy Cuddy of Harvard Business School and colleagues did the study and found some interesting things:

This research concludes that by far the strongest influences that we have on one another result from a person’s perceived warmth and competence. These two dimensions help us understand how we think about and act toward others.
Some conclusions are that:

• When assessing someone else, warmth plays a more important role than competence.
• When assessing ourselves, we believe that competence (the capability of someone to carry out intentions) is more important.
• Without knowing, we often assume that there is a "trade off" between warmth and competence in a person. These two dimensions help us understand how we think about and act toward others. We admire warm/competent people, envy (and sometimes scapegoat) those who are cold and competent, pity those who are perceived as warm and incompetent, and have contempt for the cold and incompetent.

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