EXPRESS: The role of arousal and subjective significance in the perception of warmth and competence in abstract stimuli and human faces

Meeting unknown people is inevitably linked with evaluating them, and many factors can influence this evaluation. The aim of our two experiments was to study the relationships between emotional (arousal, subjective significance) and social cognition dimensions (warmth, competence). The participants were asked to evaluate how warm and competent neutral stimuli were. Before the presentation of the neutral stimuli there were always emotional words differing in arousal and subjective significance. It was observed that higher levels of subjective significance intensified the ratings, similarly to moderate arousal, while lower and higher arousal decreased the ratings for abstract stimuli. Nevertheless, for human faces lower and moderate arousal increased ratings compared to high arousal. Finally, Higher subjective significance increased the ratings of competence (but not warmth). The results confirm the influence of emotions on social cognition and the relationship between subjective significance and competence.