By Michael Hotchkiss, Office of Communications

When peo­ple want to appear warm, they tend to agree, com­pli­ment, per­form favors and encour­age oth­ers to talk. When they want to appear com­pe­tent, they empha­size their accom­plish­ments, exude con­fi­dence and con­trol the con­ver­sa­tion. But peo­ple try­ing to man­age how oth­ers see them also take advan­tage of a neg­a­tive rela­tion­ship between warmth and com­pe­tence, accord­ing to Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity researchers Deb­o­rah Son Holoien, a grad­u­ate stu­dent in psy­chol­ogy, and Susan Fiske, the Eugene Hig­gins Pro­fes­sor of Psy­chol­ogy. Four stud­ies detailed in this arti­cle found that peo­ple will act less com­pe­tent to appear warm and act less warm to appear competent.

Holoien, Deborah Son and Susan Fiske. 2013 Down­play­ing pos­i­tive impres­sions: Com­pen­sa­tion between warmth and com­pe­tence in impres­sion man­age­ment. Jour­nal of Exper­i­men­tal Social Psy­chol­ogy 49: 33–41.

Read the abstract

This work was sup­ported by a National Sci­ence Foun­da­tion Grad­u­ate Research Fellowship.