Primacy of warmth versus competence: A motivated bias?

In line with previous results that challenge the traditional primacy of warmth over competence in evaluating people and considering the ingroup bias perspective, we postulate that perceivers use the competence and warmth dimensions differentially when judging higher or lower status group members. We test the hypothesis that the dimension that is less favorable for the outgroup and more favorable for the ingroup will be used as basis for judgment. More precisely, we investigate whether the warmth dimension would better predict the judgment toward higher status group members than the competence dimension, whereas the competence dimension would better predict the judgment toward lower status group members than the warmth dimension. Two studies test separately these effects. Results suggest the existence of a motivated bias in judging outgroup members, and underline the importance of considering a social interaction perspective when studying social judgment.