It’s the journey, not just the destination: Conveying interpersonal warmth in written introductions

Abstract

Professionals are often required to introduce themselves and engage in self-promotion in writing. Text-based self-promotion allows people to reach a wide audience but can make it difficult to convey warmth. Across seven studies (N = 2,533), we show that people conveyed greater warmth in written introductions when they emphasized their journey (i.e., the path taken to achieve their accomplishments) along with their outcomes (i.e., the accomplishments). In Studies 1a-1d, we used a real-world context and found that more journey-oriented LinkedIn introductions increased warmth perceptions, partly because these introducers were perceived as humbler. These results extended beyond naïve evaluators to human resources specialists. Studies 2–4 experimentally replicated these effects, additionally examining how information regarding the difficulty of outcomes affected perceptions and identifying communication medium as a boundary condition: journey information increased perceived warmth in text, but not video introductions. Adding journey information to written introductions conveys warmth and creates more favorable impressions.