Warmth-blindness: a tool to promote safe in-group selection

Categorize an individual as a friend or foe plays a pivotal role in navigating the social world. Social cognition research has defined two fundamental dimensions of social perception - Warmth (W) and Competence (C) - adapted to process respectively others’ intentions and their ability to enact them. We addressed the role of W and C in group membership (in-group vs. out-group) decisions performed on 150 neutral faces presented to 34 participants through two online surveys. In particular, we aimed to assess whether (i) W and C judgments could predict the in-group/out-group categorization, and (ii) the reliance on these two dimensions differed in participants who were more prone to include (low-IOE) or exclude (high-IOE) others from their in-group. The Ingroup Overexclusion Effect (IOE) is the tendency to classify more individuals as out-group members than in-group ones, in order to protect the in-group from the access of undesirable outsiders. Data show that both high ratings of W and C are necessary to categorize someone as an in-group, and that while the low-IOE participants relied both on W and C, the high-IOE participants relied exclusively on C. These results suggest that people who do not rely on the W judgment to classify an individual as in-group (warmth-blindness) use a safer inclusion criterion which might help them to (i) reduce the risk to categorize a dangerous out-group as an in-group (false positive) and (ii) feel more confident about their choice in contexts characterized by social uncertainty.