Three experiments show that describing a person in mixed rather than consistently positive (or negative) terms on warmth and competence-the two fundamental dimensions of social perception-results in more extreme impressions. Given sparse information on one dimension, amplified (i.e., more extreme) judgments arise when the other dimension is clearly opposite in valence. In Experiment 1, a competent-and-cold target was perceived as more competent than a competent-and-warm target. Experiment 2 extends this amplification effect by manipulating either warmth or competence and adding consistently negative descriptions. Experiment 3 replicates amplification using more naturalistic behavioral descriptions. These findings extend the compensation effect a negative functional relation between perceived warmth and competence, previously observed only in explicitly comparative contexts-to single-target impression formation. Implications for traditional person-perception models and distributed social cognition are discussed. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.