What's more important to you, warmth or competence?

Social psychologist Amy Cuddy of Harvard Business School and colleagues did the study and found some interesting things:

This research concludes that by far the strongest influences that we have on one another result from a person's perceived warmth and competence. These two dimensions help us understand how we think about and act toward others.

Some conclusions are that:

• When assessing someone else, warmth plays a more important role than competence.
• When assessing ourselves, we believe that competence (the capability of someone to carry out intentions) is more important.
• Without knowing, we often assume that there is a "trade off" between warmth and competence in a person. These two dimensions help us understand how we think about and act toward others. We admire warm/competent people, envy (and sometimes scapegoat) those who are cold and competent, pity those who are perceived as warm and incompetent, and have contempt for the cold and incompetent.

Link - via Barking Up The Wrong Tree

Of course, it all should depend on *what* the person is doing for you. I'd take a cold-hearted yet competent surgeon over a warm but bumbling doctor any day, but the study isn't about knowing competence - it's about perceiving competence. The last point is particularly intriguing - do you assume that warm people are naturally incompetent and that competent people are cold and mechanical?