Love and affectionate touch toward romantic partners all over the world.

Touch is the primary way people communicate intimacy in romantic relationships, and affectionate touch behaviors such as stroking, hugging and kissing are universally observed in partnerships all over the world. Here, we explored the association of love and affectionate touch behaviors in romantic partnerships in two studies comprising 7880 participants. In the first study, we used a cross-cultural survey conducted in 37 countries to test whether love was universally associated with affectionate touch behaviors. In the second study, using a more fine-tuned touch behavior scale, we tested whether the frequency of affectionate touch behaviors was related to love in romantic partnerships. As hypothesized, love was significantly and positively associated with affectionate touch behaviors in both studies and this result was replicated regardless of the inclusion of potentially relevant factors as controls. Altogether, our data strongly suggest that affectionate touch is a relatively stable characteristic of human romantic relationships that is robustly and reliably related to the degree of reported love between partners.

Modernization, collectivism, and gender equality predict love experiences in 45 countries.

Recent cross-cultural and neuro-hormonal investigations have suggested that love is a near universal phenomenon that has a biological background. Therefore, the remaining important question is not whether love exists worldwide but which cultural, social, or environmental factors influence experiences and expressions of love. In the present study, we explored whether countries' modernization indexes are related to love experiences measured by three subscales (passion, intimacy, commitment) of the Triangular Love Scale. Analyzing data from 9474 individuals from 45 countries, we tested for relationships with country-level predictors, namely, modernization proxies (i.e., Human Development Index, World Modernization Index, Gender Inequality Index), collectivism, and average annual temperatures. We found that mean levels of love (especially intimacy) were higher in countries with higher modernization proxies, collectivism, and average annual temperatures. In conclusion, our results grant some support to the hypothesis that modernization processes might influence love experiences.

Affective Interpersonal Touch in Close Relationships: A Cross-Cultural Perspective.

Interpersonal touch behavior differs across cultures, yet no study to date has systematically tested for cultural variation in affective touch, nor examined the factors that might account for this variability. Here, over 14,000 individuals from 45 countries were asked whether they embraced, stroked, kissed, or hugged their partner, friends, and youngest child during the week preceding the study. We then examined a range of hypothesized individual-level factors (sex, age, parasitic history, conservatism, religiosity, and preferred interpersonal distance) and cultural-level factors (regional temperature, parasite stress, regional conservatism, collectivism, and religiosity) in predicting these affective-touching behaviors. Our results indicate that affective touch was most prevalent in relationships with partners and children, and its diversity was relatively higher in warmer, less conservative, and religious countries, and among younger, female, and liberal people. This research allows for a broad and integrated view of the bases of cross-cultural variability in affective touch.

Savouring morality. Moral satisfaction renders food of ethical origin subjectively tastier.

Past research has shown that the experience of taste can be influenced by a range of external cues, especially when they concern food's quality. The present research examined whether food's ethicality - a cue typically unrelated to quality - can also influence taste. We hypothesised that moral satisfaction with the consumption of ethical food would positively influence taste expectations, which in turn will enhance the actual taste experience. This enhanced taste experience was further hypothesised to act as a possible reward mechanism reinforcing the purchase of ethical food. The resulting ethical food → moral satisfaction → enhanced taste expectations and experience → stronger intentions to buy/willingness to pay model was validated across four studies: one large scale international survey (Study 1) and three experimental studies involving actual food consumption of different type of ethical origin - organic (Study 2), fair trade (Study 3a) and locally produced (Study 3b). Furthermore, endorsement of values relevant to the food's ethical origin moderated the effect of food's origin on moral satisfaction, suggesting that the model is primarily supported for people who endorse these values.

Tasteful Brands: Products of Brands Perceived to be Warm and Competent Taste Subjectively Better.

Using survey and experimental data, the present research examines the effect of brand perception on experienced taste. The content of brand perception can be organized along the two social perception dimensions of warmth and competence. We use these two dimensions to systematically investigate the influence of brand perception on experienced taste and consumer behavior toward food products. The brand's perceived warmth and competence independently influenced taste, both when it was measured as a belief and as an embodied experience following consumption. Taste mediated the link between brand's warmth and competence perceptions and three consumer behavioral tendencies crucial for the marketing success of brands: buying intentions, brand loyalty, and support for the brand.

Forecasting the Primary Dimension of Social Perception: Symbolic and Realistic Threats Together Predict Warmth in the Stereotype Content Model.

The Stereotype Content Model (SCM) posits two fundamental dimensions of intergroup perception, warmth and competence, predicted by social-structural dimensions of competition and status, respectively. However, the SCM has been challenged on claiming perceived competition as the socio-structural dimension that predicts perceived warmth. The current research improves by broadening warmth's predictor (competition) to include both realistic and symbolic threat from Integrated Threat Theory (Study 1). We also measure two components of the warmth dimension: sociability and morality. Study 2 tests new items to measure both threat and warmth. The new threat items significantly improve prediction of warmth, compared with standard SCM items. Morality and sociability correlate highly and do not differ much in their predictability by competition/threat.

Integrating The Stereotype Content Model (Warmth And Competence) And The Osgood Semantic Differential (Evaluation, Potency, And Activity).

We integrate two prominent models of social perception dimensionality. In three studies, we demonstrate how the well-established semantic differential dimensions of evaluation and potency relate to the stereotype content model dimensions of warmth and competence. Specifially, using a correlational design (Study 1) and experimental designs (Studies 2 and 3), we found that semantic differential dimensions run diagonally across stereotype content model quadrants. Implications of integrating classic and modern approaches of social perception are discussed.

Nations' income inequality predicts ambivalence in stereotype content: how societies mind the gap.

Income inequality undermines societies: The more inequality, the more health problems, social tensions, and the lower social mobility, trust, life expectancy. Given people's tendency to legitimate existing social arrangements, the stereotype content model (SCM) argues that ambivalence-perceiving many groups as either warm or competent, but not both-may help maintain socio-economic disparities. The association between stereotype ambivalence and income inequality in 37 cross-national samples from Europe, the Americas, Oceania, Asia, and Africa investigates how groups' overall warmth-competence, status-competence, and competition-warmth correlations vary across societies, and whether these variations associate with income inequality (Gini index). More unequal societies report more ambivalent stereotypes, whereas more equal ones dislike competitive groups and do not necessarily respect them as competent. Unequal societies may need ambivalence for system stability: Income inequality compensates groups with partially positive social images.

The Innuendo Effect: Hearing the Positive but Inferring the Negative.

Speakers can convey mixed impressions by providing only positive information. As a series of studies shows, when communicators omit information on a salient, relevant dimension of social perception, listeners make negative inferences about the target on that omitted dimension, despite directly receiving only positive information on another dimension (Studies 1 and 2a). These negative inferences mediated the effect of the innuendo manipulation on judgments about the target person's suitability for inclusion in one's group. Simulating communication, Study 2b participants read Study 2a's descriptions and showed this innuendo effect is stronger for descriptions of female as opposed to male targets in an academic domain. We discuss implications of innuendo for the communication and perpetuation of mixed impressions and their prevalence in descriptions of subordinate group members.

Brands as Intentional Agents Framework: How Perceived Intentions and Ability Can Map Brand Perception.

Building on the Stereotype Content Model, this paper introduces and tests the Brands as Intentional Agents Framework. A growing body of research suggests that consumers have relationships with brands that resemble relations between people. We propose that consumers perceive brands in the same way they perceive people. This approach allows us to explore how social perception theories and processes can predict brand purchase interest and loyalty. Brands as Intentional Agents Framework is based on a well-established social perception approach: the Stereotype Content Model. Two studies support the Brands as Intentional Agents Framework prediction that consumers assess a brand's perceived intentions and ability and that these perceptions elicit distinct emotions and drive differential brand behaviors. The research shows that human social interaction relationships translate to consumer-brand interactions in ways that are useful to inform brand positioning and brand communications.

A question of compensation: the social life of the fundamental dimensions of social perception.

This research examines the impact of the compensation effect between the fundamental dimensions of warmth and competence on behavioral confirmation. In Experiment 1, participants were presented with 2 groups that varied on 1 of the 2 dimensions and asked to select the questions that they wanted to pose to learn more about the groups. Participants preferred to ask negative (positive) questions about the unmanipulated dimension to the high (low) group. In Experiment 2, participants rated the 2 groups on the basis of naïve people answers to those questions. As predicted, compensation emerged. Experiment 3 involved interactions among 3 participants, 1 interviewing the other 2 using the questions selected in Experiment 1. Ratings of targets' reactions again showed compensation.

Compensation versus halo: the unique relations between the fundamental dimensions of social judgment.

Recent work on the relations between the two dimensions of social judgment, that is, warmth and competence, evidenced compensation such that a group seen more positively than another group on one dimension is seen less positively on the second. The authors examine the status of this compensatory relation by introducing a third dimension in the judgment context. Experiment 1 extends earlier work in a different population, comparing compensation as a function of whether warmth or competence is manipulated and competence or warmth is the unmanipulated dimension. Experiments 2 and 3 use healthiness as the unmanipulated dimension and reveal the presence of halo rather than compensation between warmth or competence on one hand and healthiness on the other. These findings suggest that compensation may not only stem from a concern for distributive justice but may also derive from the unique structural and functional relations between the two fundamental dimensions of social judgment.