The development of stereotype content: The use of warmth and competence in assessing social groups

Past research suggests that warmth and competence are primary dimensions of social perception used by adults to understand social groups. The current study investigated whether children use these two dimensions to structure their representations of familiar groups. Results indicated that adult warmth and competence judgments were independent from one another and placed groups in warmth by competence space in ways consistent with past work. However, children showed some sensitivity to both dimensions but did not treat them as independent. Children's judgments of competence were closely aligned with adult judgments, but their judgments of warmth were influenced by factors that solely influenced adult judgments of competence. These data suggest that children develop an understanding of competence as an independent dimension prior to developing an understanding of warmth as an independent dimension and that their judgments of warmth may reflect a more general summing of all available evaluative information. Implications for children's developing understanding of the broader intergroup landscape are discussed.