Abstract:

The two fundamental dimensions of social cognition are warmth and competence. The special relationship between warmth and competence may be a positive relationship suggested by halo effect, or a negative relationship suggested by compensation effect and innuendo effect, or an orthogonal relationship affected by many factors. The perceiver factors, the characteristics of target, the relationship between perceiver and target as well as the external environment could influence the relationship between warmth and competence. The internal mechanism of different type of relationships is unclear in current study, which is the root cause of the dispute. In order to slove this dispute, we should further discussed the internal mechanism of warmth and competence in the future, take more cross-cultural comparison study, and further explore the influence factors of the relationship to build a relationship model of warmth and competence.

Key words: warmth, competence, halo effect, compensation effect, innuendo effect