When consumers read online reviews or listen to marketing pitches, they do not just evaluate the product. They also evaluate the person delivering the message. A common question in consumer psychology is whether people are more persuaded by a highly capable expert or by a friendly, relatable peer.
An investigation published in Frontiers in Psychology in 2022 was designed to shed light on that topic. The central goal of the research was to see how the perceived warmth and competence of a specific group influences its persuasive power. The findings revealed that a group’s persuasiveness depends heavily on the specific mindset of the person receiving the message at that moment.
Understanding Stereotypes and Persuasion
To investigate this dynamic, the researchers had to look at how people naturally categorize others. Roman Linne, a researcher at Helmut Schmidt University in Hamburg, Germany, led the investigation alongside Melanie Schäfer and Gerd Bohner. They based their work on the Stereotype Content Model.
This psychological framework suggests that people judge social groups based on two primary dimensions. The first dimension is warmth, which indicates whether a group is perceived as friendly, trustworthy, and having good intentions. The second dimension is competence, which indicates whether the group is seen as capable, intelligent, and efficient enough to carry out their intentions.
Linne and his team focused on what psychologists call ambivalent stereotypes. These are mental shortcuts where a group is viewed highly in one category but poorly in the other. For instance, society often views lawyers or corporate executives as highly competent but lacking in warmth.
Conversely, groups like homemakers or people with disabilities are often perceived as highly warm but lower in competence. The central knowledge gap motivating the researchers was how these mixed perceptions affect a group’s ability to persuade an audience. They also wanted to know if these sources change attitudes directly, or if they trigger a chain of events where the source makes the audience read the arguments more intensely.
The First Experiment: Testing Consumer Attitudes
To answer these questions, the researchers designed a sequence of experiments. In the first study, the team recruited 92 participants. The participants were told they were evaluating a new website that sorted product reviews based on the social group of the reviewer.
Each person read an identical review for a new shower foam. The review contained several arguments about the product’s quality.
The experimental manipulation involved telling the participants who wrote the review. Some participants were told the review came from a highly competent but less warm group, like lawyers. Others were told it came from a highly warm but less competent group, like housewives.
A third set of participants read a review supposedly written by university students. Because most of the participants were students themselves, this represented a group viewed as both warm and competent. After reading the text, participants rated how likely they were to buy or recommend the shower foam. They also listed their thoughts so the researchers could measure whether the participants were thinking deeply about the message.
The data analysis revealed a distinct pattern. Participants evaluated the shower foam more positively when it was recommended by the highly competent but less warm groups. The friendly, warm groups were less persuasive.
The analysis of the listed thoughts showed that the participants processed the arguments equally across all conditions. The persuasive advantage of the competent groups was a direct effect. The source’s perceived competence simply made the product look better to the reader.
The Second Experiment: Shifting the Audience Mindset
The researchers wondered if this preference for competence was a fixed rule, or if it changed based on the situation. To find out, they designed a second experiment with 203 participants. This time, they added a step to activate a specific mental goal before the participants read the product review.
Half the participants completed a mental exercise where they imagined navigating a complex rope net without making a single mistake. This task activated an accuracy motive, which is a mental state where a person desires to be correct and precise. The other half imagined crossing the net while holding hands and cooperating with a team.
This second visualization activated a connectedness motive, which is a mental state where a person desires social harmony and bonding. Following this mental exercise, the participants read the shower foam reviews attributed to the different groups.
The analysis showed that the audience’s mindset changed the outcome. When participants had an active accuracy motive, the highly competent but less warm groups were the most persuasive. When participants had an active connectedness motive, the highly warm but less competent groups were more persuasive.
Just as in the first study, these shifts happened directly. The matching of the audience’s mindset with the group’s specific trait drove the positive attitude toward the product.
Actionable Insights and Limitations
These findings offer practical insights for business professionals. When companies design marketing campaigns, the traits of the spokesperson should match the current mindset of the target audience.
If a business is selling a product that requires a precise, calculated decision, utilizing a highly competent spokesperson is a sound strategy. If the marketing environment naturally triggers a desire for social connection or teamwork, choosing a friendly, warm spokesperson is likely to yield better results.
The researchers noted a few caveats regarding their investigation. The first study utilized a relatively small sample size. The experiments also focused entirely on one specific consumer product.
It is possible that different types of products naturally trigger different mindsets without any mental exercises required. Lastly, using university students to represent a group with both high warmth and high competence introduces an overlapping group identity variable. Since the participants were mostly students, their shared identity might influence the persuasion process differently than a completely unaffiliated group would.
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