Fundamental dimensions of social judgment

In recent years, research on social judgment–including interpersonal perception, group perception, and even selfperception–has converged on the important realization that two fundamental content dimensions underlie these various judgments (Abele & Wojciszke, 2007; Cuddy, Fiske & Glick, 2008; Dubois & Beauvois, 2005; Fiske, Cuddy, & Glick, 2007; Judd, James-Hawkins, Yzerbyt, & Kashima, 2005; Paulhus & John, 1998; Peeters, 1992, 2008; Peeters & Czapinski, 1990; Phalet & Poppe, 1997; Rosenberg, Nelson, & Vivekananthan, 1968; Wiggins, 1979). This special issue presents a collection of recent empirical and theoretical developments in the study of these two dimensions. Different names denote the two fundamental content dimensions, depending on the specific strand of work that is examined. For instance, researchers refer to communion versus agency (Abele & Wojciszke, 2007; Bakan, 1966), warmth versus competence (Cuddy et al. 2008; Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, & Xu, 2002; Judd, et al., 2005), expressiveness versus instrumentality (Parsons & Bales, 1955), socially versus intellectually good-bad (Rosenberg, et al., 1968), otherprofitability versus self-profitability (Peeters, 1992), social desirability versus social utility (Dubois & Beauvois, 2005), morality versus competence (Wojciszke 2005), and socio-morality vs. taskability (Ybarra, Chan, Park, Burnstein, Monin, & Stanik, in this issue). The first of the two dimensions (e.g., communion, warmth, etc.) is represented by such positive traits as warm, friendly, honest, and good-natured, and by such negative traits as deceitful, cold, and unreliable. The second of the two dimensions (e.g., agency, competence, etc.) is exemplified by such positive traits as competent, assertive, ambitious, and intelligent, and by such negative traits as inefficient, indecisive, passive, and lazy. Although both dimensions play key roles in social judgment, the communion/warmth dimension is regarded as primary because it accounts for more variance in trait ratings (Abele & Wojciszke, 2007, Study 1), is more quickly recognized (Ybarra, Chan, & Park, 2001), and more severely constrains judgments on the other dimension than vice versa (Yzerbyt, Kervyn & Judd, 2008). The organization of traits into these two fundamental dimensions is not incidental, but rather has a functional meaning. Summarizing earlier intuitions (Fiske et al., 2007), Ybarra et al. (in this issue) argue that these two dimensions reflect the two core challenges humans have faced over millennia. The first key challenge concerns social acceptance and connection, clearly critical to survival. The second key challenge concerns the manifestation of skills, competencies, and status, and the pursuit of goals, given available opportunities. One might ask why there are so many different names for these fundamental dimensions. Although we cannot provide an in-depth discussion in this introduction, two issues should be noted. First, the variety of labels for these two dimensions reflects the range of research areas from which they emerged. For instance, the widely acknowledged distinction between warmth and competence is well established in stereotype research (Cuddy et al., 2008; Fiske et al., 2006; Judd et al., 2005). At the same time, the distinction between communion and agency is ubiquitous in research on the self or on gender (Abele, 2003; Abele & Wojciszke, 2007). Second, are these dimensions operationalized similarly, regardless of their idiosyncratic nomeclature? It appears that across research areas, operationalizations of the first dimension (i.e., communion/warmth) converge; researchers in different fields define and operationalize this dimension very similarly. In a way, this corroborates the claim that the communion/warmth dimension is primary in social judgment. For the agency/competence dimension, the convergence is also high for the components of ‘‘competence’’ and ‘‘efficiency.’’ However, the conceptualization of ‘‘agency’’ also stresses traits that refer to motivation and assertiveness (e.g., ambitious, goal-oriented). This facet of the agency/competence dimension is perhaps more important with respect to self-perception and interpersonal perception than with respect to group perception (i.e., stereotypes). The somewhat different ways by which these two dimensions are translated into concrete measures, hence, may stem from different research focuses (e.g. self/others vs. groups/ stereotypes).