The primacy of morality in impression development: Theory, research, and future directions

Over the past few decades, two-factor models of social cognition have emerged as a dominant framework for understanding impression development. These models suggest that two dimensions—warmth and competence—are key in shaping our cognitive, emotional, and behavioral reactions toward social targets. More recently, research has jettisoned the warmth dimension, distinguishing instead between sociability (e.g., friendliness and likeability) and morality (e.g., honesty and trustworthiness) and showing that morality is far more important than sociability (and competence) in predicting the evaluations we make of individuals and groups. Presenting research from our laboratories, we show that moral categories are central at all stages of impression development from implicit assumptions, to information gathering and to final evaluations. Moreover, moral trait information has a dominant role in predicting people’s behavioral reactions toward social targets. We also show that morality dominates impression development, because it is closely linked to the essential judgment of whether another party’s intentions are beneficial or harmful. Thus, our research informs a new framework for understanding person and group perception: The moral primacy model (MPM) of impression development. We conclude by discussing how the MPM relates to classic and emerging models of social cognition and by outlining a trajectory for future research.