DISTINGUISHED VISITING SCHOLAR

Susan T. Fiske, PhD
Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology
Princeton University

Universal Dimensions of Social Cognition: Why Warmth and Competence Matter to Social Work

November 18, 2009
6:15 - 7:45pm

Columbia University School of Social Work
1255 Amsterdam Avenue, Room CO6
New York, NY 10027

RSVP


Presentation
Social cognition reflects social evolutionary pressures. In encountering others, social beings need to know, immediately, whether the “other” is friend or foe (that is, intends good or ill) and, next, whether the “other” can enact those intentions (that is, capability). New data from various labs confirm these two universal dimensions of social cognition: warmth and competence. Our own data range from new cultural comparisons to surveys to lab experiments to neuro-imaging; all converge on the utility of these two dimensions. Promoting survival, inferences about warmth and competence depend on social structure (respectively, competition and status). People perceived as warm and competent elicit uniformly positive emotions and behavior, whereas those perceived as lacking warmth and competence elicit uniform negativity. People classified as high on one dimension and low on the other elicit predictable, ambivalent affective and behavioral reactions. Warmth and competence help explain impressions of social classes, new immigrant groups, and your next-door neighbor.

About the Presenter
Susan T. Fiske is Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology, Princeton University (PhD., Harvard University; honorary doctorates, Université Catholique de Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium; Universiteit Leiden, Netherlands). She investigates cognitive stereotypes and emotional prejudices at cultural, interpersonal, and neural levels. The U.S. Supreme Court cited her gender-bias testimony, and she testified before President Clinton’s Race Initiative Advisory Board. Editor of Annual Review of Psychology and Handbook of Social Psychology, she wrote Social Beings: Core Motives in Social Psychology  and Social Cognition. She has recently won a Guggenheim, the American Psychological Association’s Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award, and the Association for Psychological Science William James Award. She has been elected President of Association for Psychological Science, President of the Foundation for the Advancement of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, and Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

THIS IS A PUBLIC EVENT

Contact us: swevents@columbia.edu