Vanessa Van Edwards breaks down Dr. Susan Fiske's research on why competent people seem intimidating. When you signal competence without warmth, people find you cold and hard to read. The more successful you become, the more competence cues you emit, and the less approachable you seem.
Competence without warmth leaves people feeling suspicious. This is directly from the research. So Dr. Susan Fiske, she identified what happens with very smart, impressive people is they come at you with all their smarts, their accolades, and their degrees and their successes and their accomplishments. And the more successful someone gets, sometimes the less relatable they become. And that's why you have very smart people who they hear, oh, I'm intimidated by that person, or that person is cold, or I don't know, I just can't read her. It's because what's happening is they're sending so many competence cues that I feel distance.
