Social evaluation: Comparing models across interpersonal, intragroup, intergroup, several-group, and many-group contexts

doi:10.1016/bs.aesp.2020.11.001

Advances in Experimental Social Psychology

Volume 63, 2021, Pages 1-68

https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.aesp.2020.11.001 Get rights and content

Abstract

This chapter compares five models that analyze social evaluation from the micro, interpersonal to macro, many-group level: the Dual Perspective Model (DPM), Behavioral Regulation Model (BRM), Dimensional Compensation Model (DCM), Stereotype Content Model (SCM), and Agency-Beliefs-Communion (ABC) Model. A proper understanding of social evaluation must consider the models’ different types and numbers of perceivers, targets, and dimensions. By making a systematic comparison in the first part of the chapter, we sharpen the aim and scope of the complementary models and research programs supporting them. In the second part, we combine the models’ premises and evidence bases to generate new insights about social evaluation. In this way, we show that the models can expand and enrich one another. Our conclusion is that, instead of competing against one another, related theoretical perspectives are best compared and integrated to improve scientific insight about complex phenomena, such as social evaluation.

Section snippets

Social evaluation is context-dependent and complex: An illustration

Organizations comprise several contexts in which goal achievement and social functioning require adequate social evaluation. Thus, organizations provide an opportunity to test whether the content, priority, and relation of social evaluative dimensions is context-independent, simple, and can be explained by a single model of social evaluation. In the following introduction, we refute this claim by examining five social evaluative contexts (i.e., personnel recruitment and development, managing

Joining forces to better understand how people navigate their social environment

Five models of social evaluation are supported by solid evidence. These models disagree, however, about the number and content of the dimensions perceivers use to evaluate targets, the priority of some dimension(s), and their relation (i.e., zero, positive or negative linear, or curvilinear). The standard approach to these scientific controversies is to empirically test conflicting predictions, to see which model wins.

We advocate an alternative approach of systematically comparing the models’

A systematic comparison of five models of social evaluation

Next, we compare the theoretical roots, focal domains, premises, and evidence for the five models, organizing them from the micro, interpersonal level to the macro, many-group level. Currently, knowledge about social evaluation is dispersed across the literature—no contribution systematically compares evidence collected in the context of these five models to delimit and clarify their aim and scope (see Table 1).

Intertwining our social evaluation models to generate new insights

At first glance, the five models provide conflicting, confusing answers to three questions. When navigating the social world, perceivers evaluate targets on what specific dimensions? What dimension has priority? And what is the relation between the dimensions? However, by reviewing the models’ theoretical roots, focal domains, premises, and evidence, we delimited and clarified the aim and scope of each model.

The DPM (Abele and Wojciszke, 2007, Abele and Wojciszke, 2014) examines interpersonal

From adversarial positions to model comparison, combination, and integration

The collaboration between our seemingly conflicting models turned out to be productive, but was not easy. It required agreed-on norms and planned behaviors that we described in detail elsewhere (Ellemers et al., 2020). We briefly review this contribution below so as to concisely situate the above comparison and combination of the models in an approach and procedure that may be helpful for other multi-theory collaborations.

Many more researchers contributed to the models than the five authors of

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Citation Excerpt :
Here, we examined how people receive and process negative feedback on their morality (e.g., being perceived as uncooperative) compared to negative feedback on their competence (e.g., being perceived as incompetent). We thus compared feedback addressing the two fundamental dimensions people use to judge others (i.e., the Vertical dimension for ‘getting along’, including communion/warmth and morality; and the Horizontal dimension for ‘getting ahead’, including agency and competence; Abele-Brehm, Ellemers, Fiske, Koch, & Yzerbyt, 2021; Koch, Yzerbyt, Abele, Ellemers, & Fiske, 2020). For social evaluations, morality is of special importance as it refers to the norms of our societies and regulates the relations between individuals living in these societies (Ellemers, 2017; Ellemers et al., 2013).
Social contexts can affect how people respond to feedback from others. We investigated how context information modulates the cognitive processing of feedback messages (i.e., external evaluations of one's character). We manipulated two aspects of (positive and negative) feedback messages: The identity of the sender (ingroup vs. outgroup member), and the dimension (one's competence vs. morality) as focal concern addressed in the feedback. We measured affective and behavioral responses after participants received such feedback (Study 1, N = 194), and additionally recorded an EEG in Study 2 (N = 49). In both studies, participants reported being more emotionally affected by negative feedback from ingroup compared to outgroup senders. Participants in Study 1 also reported to perceive feedback on their morality (vs. competence) as more negative. Complementing these findings, ERP results of Study 2 revealed greater preferential processing (i.e., increased P200) of feedback messages delivered by ingroup rather than outgroup members. Additionally, participants paid less sustained attention to feedback on their morality (vs. competence, as indicated by decreased P300- and LPP-amplitudes), and afterward recalled less morality- (vs. competence-) related feedback messages. The ERP findings were more pronounced for negative compared to positive feedback. These results suggest that subtle cues such as the social group-membership of a sender or the dimension addressed in a feedback message can modulate the cognitive processing of that message. Furthermore, our findings may explain why people are inclined to disregard negative feedback from outgroup senders and on their moral character.

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^†: All authors contributed equally.

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Chapter One - Social evaluation: Comparing models across interpersonal, intragroup, intergroup, several-group, and many-group contexts

Abstract

Section snippets

Social evaluation is context-dependent and complex: An illustration

Joining forces to better understand how people navigate their social environment

A systematic comparison of five models of social evaluation

Intertwining our social evaluation models to generate new insights

From adversarial positions to model comparison, combination, and integration

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

Advances in Experimental Social Psychology

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

NeuroImage

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences

Personality and Individual Differences

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

Advances in Experimental Social Psychology

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

Preference for other persons’ traits is dependent on the kind of social relationship

Social Psychology

The Big Two of agency and communion in language and communication

You are so kind—and I am kind and smart: Actor—observer differences in the interpretation of on-going behavior

Polish Psychological Bulletin

Fundamental dimensions of social judgment

European Journal of Social Psychology

Navigating the social world: Shared horizontal and vertical evaluative dimensions

Psychological Review

Agency and communion in self-concept and in self-esteem

Comparing the facets of the big two in global evaluation of self versus other people

European Journal of Social Psychology

Facets of the fundamental content dimensions: Agency with Competence and assertiveness—Communion with warmth and morality

Frontiers in Psychology

Towards an operationalization of the fundamental dimensions of agency and communion: Trait content ratings in five countries considering valence and frequency of word occurrence

European Journal of Social Psychology

Agency and communion from the perspective of self versus others

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

Body posture and interpersonal perception in a dyadic interaction: A Big Two analysis

European Journal of Social Psychology

The nature of prejudice

The “common good” phenomenon: Why similarities are positive and differences are negative

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

A cognitive-ecological explanation of intergroup biases

Psychological Science

Forming impressions of personality

Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology

As diversity increases, people paradoxically perceive social groups as more similar

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

The duality of human existence: An essay on psychology and religion

Emotional expressions reconsidered: Challenges to inferring emotion from human facial movements

Psychological Science in the Public Interest

Success leads to agentic cognition: Two field studies

Social Psychological and Personality Science

Joining or derogating: The role of permeability of group boundaries in compensatory judgments among low-status group members

Insensitivity to future consequences following damage to human prefrontal cortex

Cognition

On the importance of being moral: The distinctive role of morality in social judgment

Social Cognition

Social psychology

Representative design and probabilistic theory in a functional psychology

Psychological Review

Compensation is for real: Evidence from existing groups in the context of actual relations

Group Processes and Intergroup Relations

Compensation in intergroup relations: An investigation of its structural and strategic foundations

British Journal of Social Psychology

Power posing: Brief nonverbal displays affect neuroendocrine levels and risk tolerance

Psychological Science

The primacy of agency over competence in status perception

Social Psychology

The phenomenology of social perception: Sociability and morality perceptions map onto experiences of pleasure and threat

Us versus them: Social identity shapes neural responses to intergroup competition and harm

Psychological Science

On the wrong side of the trolley track: Neural correlates of relative social valuation

Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience

Stereotypes and Schadenfreude: Behavioral and physiological markers of pleasure at others’ misfortunes