You want to give a good impression? Be honest! Moral traits dominate group impression formation

Abstract

Research has shown that warmth and competence are core dimensions on which perceivers judge others and that warmth has a primary role at various phases of impression formation. Three studies explored whether the two components of warmth (i.e., sociability and morality) have distinct roles in predicting the global impression of social groups. In Study 1 (N=105) and in Study 2 (N=112) participants read an immigration scenario depicting an unfamiliar social group in terms of high (vs. low) morality, sociability, and competence. In both studies, participants were asked to report their global impression of the group. Results showed that global evaluations were better predicted by morality than by sociability or competence-trait ascriptions. Study 3 (N=86) further showed that the effect of moral traits on group global evaluations was mediated by the perception of threat. The importance of these findings for the impression-formation process is discussed.

Why Are Protestants More Prosocial Than Catholics? A Comparative Study Among Orthodox Dutch Believers

“…This finding also runs contrary to our expectations, as previous studies have indicated that Protestants are particularly prone to showing a strong ingroup bias when evaluating concerns about morality in general (Cohen & Rozin, 2001;Cohen et al, 2003), although those studies did not directly contrast Protestant with Catholic participants. Whereas previous studies have shown that even atheists perceive atheists as being immoral, the present findings suggests that group membership affects the perceived morality and prosociality of other groups (Brambilla & Leach, 2014;Brambilla, Sacchi, Rusconi, Cherubini, & Yzerbyt, 2012), even when using an implicit measure, such as the representativeness heuristic task. The finding that Catholics tended to perceive ingroup members as more prosocial than outgroup members converges with the finding that Catholics scored higher on the selfsignaling and the better-than-average measures, reflecting that Catholics may be more inclined to maintain a positive view of their own group.…”

Aplicación extendida del Modelo del Contenido de los Estereotipos (MCE) hacia tres grupos de inmigrantes en España

“…Algunos trabajos han demostrado que la calidez puede subdividirse en dos dimensiones diferentes: sociabilidad y moralidad, debido a que las personas perciben las característi-cas relacionadas con la moralidad de forma distinta a las relacionadas con la sociabilidad, tanto a nivel individual (Anderson y Sedikides, 1991;Rosenberg et al, 1968) como grupal (Brambilla et al, 2011;Brambilla, Sacchi, Rusconi, Cherubini y Yzerbyt, 2012;Leach et al, 2007). Como destacan Leach et al (2007), aunque moralidad y sociabilidad pueden formar parte de una misma dimensión general de "benevolencia", realmente son dimensiones conceptualmente diferentes: un grupo puede ser moral sin necesidad de ser sociable, y viceversa.…”

“…De hecho, los participantes parecen más interesados en obtener información sobre moralidad que sobre sociabilidad cuando tienen que formarse una impresión global de otras personas (Brambilla et al, 2011, Estudio 1). Además, la moralidad era mejor predictor (respecto a sociabilidad o competencia) de las evaluaciones globales sobre un grupo inmigrante desconocido (Brambilla et al, 2012; Estudios 1 y 2).…”

“…Asimismo, demuestra que moralidad y sociabilidad son dos dimensiones diferentes que no deben ser unidas en una sola (calidez). Finalmente, refuerza la idea mantenida por otros autores de que las tres dimensiones de estereotipos son importantes no sólo a nivel endogrupal (Leach et al, 2007), sino también a nivel exogrupal (Brambilla et al, 2012).…”

Trait Associations for Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in News Media

“…Within social psychology, dimensional models of person perception have been dominant, positing that there are two (e.g., Cuddy, Fiske, & Glick, 2008;Fiske, Cuddy, & Glick, 2007;Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, & Xu, 2002) or three (e.g., Brambilla, Rusconi, Sacchi, & Cherubini, 2011;Brambilla, Sacchi, Rusconi, Cherubini, & Yzerbyt, 2012;Goodwin, Piazza, & Rozin, 2014;Landy, Piazza, & Goodwin, 2016;Leach, Ellemers, & Barreto, 2007) key trait dimensions upon which individuals and social groups are evaluated. In the context of political preferences, existing research suggests that the most important trait dimension is competence (Ballew & Todorov, 2007;Cislak & Wojciszke, 2006;Funk, 1997;Todorov, Mandisodza, Goren, & Hall, 2005), although other research also highlights the importance of the morality dimension (Goodwin et al, 2014).…”