On the role of emotional traits in impression formation

280 Italian undergraduates (90 men and 190 women), ages 18 to 30 years, rated a warm, cold, jealous, or envious stimulus person on 15 7-point semantic differential scales. Varying the sex of the stimulus person, 8 different versions of the description were obtained. Factor analysis, carried out to identify a smaller set of non-redundant dimensions, yielded three factors. A multivariate analysis of variance, 4 (warm, cold, jealous, envious) x 2 (male stimulus person, female stimulus person) x 2 (male respondents, female respondents), indicated significant effects for the variable "trait" on the first and second factors, an interaction between the sex of the stimulus person and the sex of the respondent on the first factor, and an effect for the sex of the respondent on the second factor. The traits "envious" and "jealous" acted as central qualities, and the sex of the stimulus person and of the respondent played an important role in impression formation. Further implications of the finding were discussed.