The role of arousal and subjective significance in the perception of warmth and competence in abstract stimuli and human faces

Abstract

Meeting unknown people is inevitably linked with evaluating them, and many factors can influence this evaluation. The aim of our two experiments was to study the relationships between emotional (arousal, subjective significance) and social cognition (warmth, competence) dimensions. Participants saw emotional words differing in arousal and subjective significance and then evaluated neutral stimuli on warmth and competence. It was observed that words with higher levels of subjective significance intensified the ratings, as did words of moderate arousal; however, words of lower and higher arousal decreased the ratings. Higher subjective significance increased the ratings of competence (but not warmth). The results confirm the influence of emotions on social cognition and the relationship between subjective significance and competence.

Keywords

Warmth competence arousal subjective significance

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