When You're Hot, You're Hot! Warm-Cold Effects in First Impressions of Persons and Teaching Effectiveness

We examined the effects of Kelley's "warm/cold" manipulation on first impressions of persons and teaching ability. A stimulus person, posing as a visiting professor, gave a "neutral" lecture to 240 university students. Before the stimulus person appeared, half of the subjects received information that he was a rather warm person, whereas the other half was told that he was a rather cold person. In turn, half of each of these groups was informed that he was a professor of physical education and the other half that he was a professor of social psychology. A 2 (warm/cold condition) × 2 (discipline of the stimulus-person) × 2 (subjects' sex) multivariate analysis of variance revealed that (a) subjects who were led to believe that the stimulus person was warm perceived him as a more effective teacher and as less unpleasant, more sociable, less irritable, less ruthless, more humorous, less formal, and more humane than did subjects who were told that he was a cold person; and (b) neither the disciplinary status of the stimulus person nor the sex of the subjects had an effect on subjects' perception of the lecturer. Results were discussed in regard to halo, context, and status effects.