Forming Impressions of Others: “Warm” and “Cold” as Central Traits

We tend to think that people separate into two groups, between warm or liked and cold or unliked. This article will explain about it for more, and also offer an experiment about the matter by Asch.

It could be argued that Asch found these sharp differences in meaning only because the two “authors” (Jefferson and Lenin) represented such prominent, polar opposites in the minds of his subjects. However, these clearcut differences in perceived meaning emerged even when far more subtle cues were used. Asch (1946) presented each of two groups of subjects with a list of character traits describing a single hypothetical individual, and he asked the subjects to write a brief sketch giving their impressions of this person and rating their impressions on a series of adjective scales. For one group, the list of traits was as follows: intelligent-skillful-industrious-warm-determined-practical-cautious. For the other group, the traits were: intelligent-skillful-industrious-cold-determined-practical-cautious. Notice that the two lists are identical, except for the words “warm” and “cold.” Asch found that the subjects were able to take this simple list of discrete traits and form an integrated impression of the hypothetical individual. Moreover, the impressions formed by the two groups turned out to be dramatically different.

Those subjects who had received the “warm” list tended to rate the individual as generous, happy, good-natured, humorous, and humane; those who had received the “cold” list rated the person as ungenerous, unhappy, unstable, humorless, and ruthless. Thus, a subtle difference in stimulus traits produced two very different, but coherent, impressions of the hypothetical individual.

                One of the criticisms of Asch’s warm-cold study concerns its artificiality—the subjects’ judgments were not based on exposure to a real person. Harold H. Kelley (1950) answered this critism with a study of the warm-cold variable as it operates in the classroom. Kelley told the students in a psychology course at M.I.T. that a guest lecturer would lead the class discussion for the day. Before the “lecturer” (a confederate of the experimenter) arrived, the students were given a short, written a biographical sketch of him. Half of the students received the following sketch:

Mr. _____ is a graduate student in the Department of Economics and Social Science here at M.I.T. He has had three semesters of teaching experience in psychology at another college. This is his first semester teaching Economics 70. He is twenty-six years old, a veteran and married. People who know him consider him to be a rather cold person, industrious, critical, practical and determined. [p. 433]

                The other students received the identical sketch, except that the word “warm” was sustituted for “cold.” The “guest lecturer” then appeared and conducted a twenty-minute discussion, during which the experimenter kep track of the number of times the students asked questions or made comments. After the “lecturer” had left, the students were asked to give their candid impressions of him on a series of adjective scales and in a short, written descriptive statement.

                Kelley found that the “warm” instructor was liked far more than the “cold” one. Even though the subjects were judging identical behavior, those given the “warm” sketch rated the instructor as more considerate, informal, sociable, popular, good-natured, humorous, and humane than those who had been told he was “cold.” Interestingly, the warm-cold variable affected not only the students’ impressions but also their behavior: 56 percent of the students who had received the “warm” sketch participated in the class discussion, while only 32 percent of those who had received the “cold” sketch did so.

Kelley’s experiment is important for two reasons: first, it corroborates the findings of Asch’s earlier, less realistic study, thereby lending greater support to the importance of subtle cues in the development of an integrated impression; second, because it was found that students were more apt to interact with an instructor who impressed them favorably than with one who did not, the experiment shows that people’s impressions have behavioral consequences that may be important.

The effects of “warmth” and “coldness” on the judgment of other personal characteristics is also an example of what has been called the halo effect, a tendency to assume that a person who has some positive characteristics also possesses others, and that a person who has a negative characteristic also has other unfavorable qualities. Thus more intelligent people are seen as more attractive, and vice versa (Solomon and Saxe, 1977), a younger job applicant may be seen as more energetic (even if his or her behavior does not initially suggest this), a lazy person may be seen as stupid, and so on.

(Source: Raven, Bertram H., Rubin, Jeffrey Z. (1983). SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 2nd Edition. John Wiley & Sons, Inc: United States of America.)

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