群际评价中热情与能力关系的情境演变:评价意图与结果的作用

Situational evolution of the relationship between warmth and competence in intergroup evaluation: Impact of evaluating intention and behavioral outcomes

情境影响社会认知,在群际评价时热情和能力两个维度的关系如何随着情境而变化?本文采用"遥远星球范式"对此进行了系列实验研究,分别基于热情和能力的单维和双维信息呈现视角,检验竞争与合作两种情境下成功和失败的结果对群体热情与能力感知的影响。结果表明:(1)在对外群体的热情和能力感知中,由热情维度推断能力时两者存在正向关系;由能力维度推断热情时则存在负向关系。(2)评价意图对外群体成员热情和能力评价的影响与具体情境无关。人们对外群体成员的热情和能力评价在得知互动意图时均呈现"趋中"平衡的趋势。(3)成败结果对外群体成员热情和能力评价的影响受到情境的制约。竞争情境中热情和能力表现出"此消彼长"的反向演变趋势,而合作情境中热情和能力表现出"同消同长"的同向演变趋势。

Two critical dimensions,warmth and competence,feature prominently in people’s social cognitive processes,and there is a great deal of research examining the nature of these two dimensions and their relationships.Recently,researchers have become increasingly interested in the situational dependency that may characterize people’s perceptions of these two dimensions.However,past research has only considered the effect of simple and repeated interactions,leaving the nature and outcomes of the interactions unexamined.According to social interdependence theory,the competitive or cooperative interactions between groups may elicit disparate downstream effects on perceptions of group members.Various theoretical perspectives converged on the notion that the outcomes of previous interaction sessions may exercise a crucial but differential impact on the warmth and competence rating of outgroup members.The current work aimed to investigate the joint effect of the competitive/collaborative context and the interaction outcomes on people’s warmth and competence ratings as well as the relationship between the two dimensions.The current research explored this problem in two studies.We investigated how the result of success or failure affects intergroup evaluation in different situations of competition and cooperation.A total of 496 undergraduates were recruited.In all four of our experiments,we used the Distant Planetary Paradigm and imagined a four-stage encounter with an alien prospecting team,with the characteristics and outcomes of each session manipulated according to experimental design.After each stage of the encounter,participants rated their session manipulated according to experimental design.After each stage of the encounter,participants rated their perceptions of the warmth and competence of the alien groups.The results showed that:(1)a positive relationship between warmth and competence ratings was observed when participants inferred competence from warmth-related information,and when they inferred warmth from competence-related information,the relationship reversed;(2)during the first stage of interaction,knowing the coaction intention of the outgroup exerted an overarching“centralizing”effect over people’s perception of the member of that outgroup,with the ratings on both dimensions showing a compensatory tendency;and(3)the effect of interaction outcome was contingent on the coaction contexts,such that in a competition context,ratings of warmth and competence exhibited an anti-parallel tendency as the four-stage interactions unfolded,such that a successful outcome may cause a rising-warmth-falling-competence tendency and a failure outcome may cause a warmth-falling-competence rising tendency,whereas in a cooperation context,ratings on the two dimensions evolved in a parallel fashion,such that a successful cooperation may cause an overall increase in ratings on both dimensions and a failed cooperation may cause overall falling ratings on both dimensions.In conclusion,the current research is the first to explore the situational evolution of the relationship between warmth and competence ratings in intergroup evaluations,and has important implications for the future inter-group relationship research.This line of inquiry makes a novel contribution to the field by examining how social relationships within joint activities could influence behavior and intentions toward members of an outgroup.