Which contents underlie human behavior and human information processing?
What are the ultimate motives that instigate individualsâ behaviors? Is it the search for grandiosity, excellence, wealth, influence, power? Is it the search for love, connectedness, understanding, trust? Numerous philosophers and psychologists have been concerned with these questions â some have focused more on the âpowerâ motive, some more on the âloveâ or âaffiliationâ motive.
Similarly: what are the aims of social perception? Does social perception specifically aim at recognizing likeable or lovable others who make us feel comfortable and who fulfill our desire for affiliation? Or does social perception aim at detecting dangerous others who make us feel uncomfortable and insecure and whom we want to avoid?
Furthermore, how can an individualâs behavior be described both from the perspective of an outside observer (like, for instance, a personality researcher) and from the perspective of the individual him/herself? Are power-striving versus affiliation-striving adequate descriptions for individualsâ personalities? Do these different themes also underlie individualsâ self-descriptions of their behavior and their self-view? Moreover, how do these considerations apply to larger entities like the perception and behaviors of different social groups?
These are very fundamental questions and modern psychology has differentiated them into more narrow ones like, for instance, in motivation research, in studies on person perception, or in studies on actor â observer differences in attribution. More narrow-ranged research questions allow an empirical investigation and, hence, more reliable answers. Scientific advantage, however, results from an alteration between broad-scale theorizing and more specific hypotheses testing. It is therefore useful to have constructs that are broad enough to cover a large range of questions related to the questions outlined above, e.g., motivational forces of behavior, functional meaning of social perception, interpretation of individualsâ behavior and personality from outside and from the person herself, and the understanding of cultures as associations of values.
The agency-communion conceptualization
We here argue that the constructs of âagencyâ and âcommunionâ (and related terms) have adopted the status of such overarching constructs. They are useful for describing motivational forces of behavior, for analyzing the functional meaning of social perception, and for researching the content dimensions of personality, self-concept, and values.
Moreover, the compelling nature of the agency-communion framework has also to do with the rediscovery of the role of content in psychology. Whereas previous theorizing was much concerned with processes (e.g., information processing, self-regulatory processes), it has now become clear that such processes are also dependent on content.
Bakan introduced the constructs of agency and communion in 1966 (although they have already a long history in philosophy, see Markey, 2002) and described them as the basic modalities of human existence.
I have adopted the terms âagencyâ and âcommunionâ to characterize two fundamental modalities in the existence of living forms, agency for the existence of an organism as an individual, and communion for the participation of the individual in some larger organism of which the individual is part. Agency manifests itself in the formation of separations; communion in the lack of separation. Agency manifests itself in isolation, alienation, and aloneness; communion in contact, openness, and union. Agency manifests itself in the urge to master; communion in non-contractual cooperation. Agency manifests itself in the repression of thought, feeling, and impulse; communion in the lack and removal of repression.
(Bakan, 1966, pp. 14â15)
The present Chapter 2 (Chan, Wang, and Ybarra) will be specifically concerned with the very basic evolutionary meaning of agency and communion.
The agency-communion conceptualization as an integrating framework in different fields of psychology
Researchers in many areas of psychology have postulated these two kinds of content under different names like agency vs. communion, intellectually vs. socially good-bad, masculinity vs. femininity, instrumentality vs. expressiveness, competence vs. morality, dominance vs. submissiveness, warmth vs. competence, and trust vs. autonomy (Abele et al., 2016; Abele, Cuddy, Judd, & Yzerbyt, 2008; Erikson, 1950; Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, & Xu, 2002; Gebauer, Wagner, Sedikides, & Neberich, 2013; Helgeson & Fritz, 1999; Judd, James-Hawkins, Yzerbyt, & Kashima, 2005; Paulhus & John, 1998; Paulhus & Trapnell, 2008; Wiggins, 1979, 1991; Wojciszke, 2005; Ybarra et al., 2008). Despite the different names, the constructs all share a common core, which refers to agency and communion (see Abele & Wojciszke, 2014, for an overview).
A look into the literature in motivation, personality, social, and cross-cultural psychology shows that the agency-communion framework is indeed overarching. The two themes of agency and communion have, for instance, been shown to emerge in autobiographical narratives of both adults (Diehl, Owen, & Youngblade, 2004; Uchronski, 2008) and children (Ely, Melzi, Hadge, & McCabe, 1998). They emerged in research on fundamental motives and values. For instance, McAdams (1988) distinguished between the intimacy motive (affiliation, communion) and the power motive (influence, uniqueness, agency); in a similar way, Hogan (1982) framed his socio-analytic theory around agency and communion, labeling the two primary human motives âgetting aheadâ (agency) and âgetting alongâ (communion). Horowitz and colleagues (2006) even used the terms âagentic motiveâ (individual influence, control, or mastery) and âcommunal motiveâ (connection, participation in a larger unit with other people). Values can also be distinguished into these broad classes of content (Rokeach, 1973; Schwartz, 1992; Trapnell & Paulhus, 2012): people have been shown to differ in the degree to which they value motives of getting ahead (exemplified by power, expertise, success, etc.) versus getting along (exemplified by relational obligations, âpurposeâ in life, and sacrificing for others; Trapnell & Paulhus, 2012).
The agency-communion conceptualization has been shown to map onto personality. In particular, work on the circumplex model (Wiggins, 1979, 1991) showed that personality can be represented with the dimensions of dominanceâ submissiveness (agency) and nurturanceâcold-heartedness (communion). Paulhus and colleagues (Paulhus & John, 1998; Paulhus & Trapnell, 2008) extended this reasoning, using the agency-communion framework to distinguish between different self-presentational styles: an agentic self-presentational style tends to form a âsuper-heroâ impression (a person presenting him/herself as being able to master every challenge), whereas a communal self-presentational style tends to form a âsaintâ impression (a person presenting him/herself as always acting in moral ways).
In social psychology, the agency-communion conceptualization is prominent in person perception (Abele & BruckmĂŒller, 2011; Abele & Wojciszke, 2007; Wojciszke, 2005; Ybarra, Chan, & Park, 2001), group perception (Brambilla, Rusconi, Sacchi, & Cherubini, 2011; Brambilla, Sacchi, Rusconi, Cherubini, & Yzerbyt, 2012; Leach, Ellemers, & Barreto, 2007), self-perception (Gebauer et al., 2013; Wojciszke, Baryla, Parzuchowski, Szymkow, & Abele, 2011), gender (Eagly, 1987) and actorâobserver differences in impression formation (Abele, BruckmĂŒller, & Wojciszke, 2014; Abele & Wojciszke, 2007). It is important in stereotype research (Fiske et al., 2002) and even in applied settings like power (Cislak, 2013), organizations, marketing, and brand perception (Kervyn, Chan, Malone, Korpusik, & Ybarra, 2014; Andrei, Zait, Vatamnescu, & Pinzaru, 2017). While the majority of this work has been conducted with North American and Western European samples, there is some evidence suggesting cultural universality of the Big Two (Abele et al., 2016; Abele, Uchronski, Suitner, & Wojciszke, 2008; Saucier et al., 2014; Wojciszke & Bialobrzeska, 2014; Ybarra et al., 2008).
The present Chapter 3 on social cognition (Wojciszke and Abele), Chapter 4 on stereotypes (Fiske), Chapter 5 on self-concept and self-esteem (Abele and Hauke), Chapter 6 on motives (Locke), Chapter 7 on social desirability (Paulhus), Chapter 8 on grandiose narcissism (Gebauer and Sedikides), and Chapter 9 on gender (Sczesny, Nater, and Eagly) elaborate these issues.
Are there alternatives to the agency-communion conceptualization?
Recent research on Big Two also concerns (a) how exactly the Big Two should be conceptualized and (b) the question whether in certain instances a conceptualization with a third factor (forming a âBig Threeâ framework) might be preferable.
Abele et al. (2016) have, for instance, suggested and shown that agency and communion have two facets each, competence and assertiveness in the case of agency, and warmth and morality in the case of communion. The fruitfulness of both holding on the Big Two conceptualization and widening it by facets is discussed in several chapters, with respect to stereotypes (Chapter 4, Fiske), with respect to the self-concept and to self-esteem (Chapter 5, Abele and Hauke), and with respect to gender (Chapter 9, Sczesny, Nater, and Eagly).
Besides reasoning about sub-constructs of agency and communion, one might, however, also think about contextual conditions that influence the number of the âBigâ content dimensions. A thought-provoking example of such research is presented in Chapter 14 (Koch and Imhoff). These authors argue that an analysis of group stereotypes can result in three dimensions. Possibly the method of assessment and/or the fact that respondents have or have not a personal relationship to these groups influences the number and kind or resulting dimensions.
Book contents
The present book describes the ubiquity of the agency-communion framework in different fields of psychology. It integrates for the first time several approaches building on the agency-communion conceptualization, which have been developed in different fields of psychology, more or less apart from each other. By bringing together these different approaches we want to facilitate an overview of the agency-communion framework in different settings; we want to demonstrate the theoretical and empirical fruitfulness of the agency-communion framework; we want to show connections between so far unrelated areas of research; and we also want to suggest new directions of research, as outlined above.
In the second chapter, entitled âConnect and strive to survive and thrive: the evolutionary meaning of communion and agency,â Chan, Wang, and Ybarra take an evolutionary point of view and discuss that in order to survive, humans must affiliate with cooperative others. To thrive, humans must pursue skills and goals. The authors explore how evaluating other people on the dimensions of communion and agency is adaptive in service of these two fundamental needs of surviving and thriving. In particular, communion serves primarily to detect who poses a threat to group life and should be avoided; agency serves primarily to detect wh...
