Agency und Communion aus der Akteurs- vs. Beobachtungsperspektive

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Andrea Abele-Brehm
• Subject Area: Social Psychology, Industrial and Organisational Psychology
• Term: from 2008 to 2015
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 72229927

• Final Report Year: 2016

Final Report Abstract

We summarize and integrate a large body of research showing that agency and communion constitute two fundamental dimensions of content in social cognition. Agentic content refers to goal-achievement and task functioning (competence, assertiveness, decisiveness), whereas communal content refers to the maintenance of relationships and social functioning (benevolence, trustworthiness, morality). We developped a "Dual Perspective Model of Agency and Communion" (DPM) that showed that the two dimensions are differently linked to the basic perspectives in social interaction, i.e. the actor versus the observer/recipient perspectives. We tested this model in several experiments. First, our research revealed a primacy of communion in social information processing. A subsequent study investigated whether there is a similar asymmetry in the "density" of communion and agency. We tested whether communal content is more densely clustered in memory than agentic content, that is, more similar to other communal content than agentic content is similar to other agentic content. Three multidimensional scaling studies addressed this question and suggested an interaction with valence: While negative communal content is more densely clustered than negative agentic content, we found no differences in density between positive communal and positive agentic content. In line with the dual perspective model our research further revealed that in the observer/recipient perspective (perception of others), communal content receives more weight than agentic content. In the actor perspective (self-perception), agentic content receives more weight than communal content. In a summary paper we discuss all these issues as well as the complex issues of relations of agency and communion to valence as well as associations between agency and communion.

Publications

• Agency and communion from the perspective of self versus others. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 93. 2007, Issue 5, pp. 751-763.
  Abele, A.E. & Wojciszke, B.
  
• Fundamental dimen-sions of social judgment. European Journal of Social Psychology, Vol. 38. 2008, Issue 7 (Special Issue), pp. 1063–1065.
  Abele, A.E., Cuddy, A.J., Judd, C.M., Yzerbyt, V.Y.
  
• The influence of success and failure experienc-es on agency. European Journal of Social Psychology, 38, 436-448. European Journal of Social Psychology, Vol. 38. 2008, Issue 3, pp. 436–448.
  Abele, A.E., Rupprecht, T., & Wojciszke, B.
  
• Towards an operationalization of the fundamental dimensions of agency and communion: Trait content ratings in five countries considering valence and frequency of word occurrence. European Journal of Social Psychol-ogy, 38, 1202-1217. European Journal of Social Psychology, Vol. 38. 2008, Issue 7 (Special Issue), pp. 1202–1217.
  Abele, A.E., Uchronski, M., Suitner, C., Wojciszke, B.
  
• Self-esteem is dominated by agentic over communal information. European Journal of Social Psychology, 41, 617-627. European Journal of Social Psychology, Vol. 41. 2011, Issue 5, pp. 617–627.
  Wojciszke, B., Baryla, W., Parzuchowski, M., Szymkow, A., Abele, A.E.
  
• Empathic Perspective Taking and the Situational Malleability of the Communal Self-concept. Self and Identity, Vol. 12. 2013, Issue 3, pp. 238-258.
  Uchronski, M., Abele, A.E., Bruckmüller, S.
  
• Editorial: The Big Two in Social Judgment and Behavior. Social Psychology, Vol. 44. 2013, Issue 2, pp. 61-62.
  Abele, A.E., Wojciszke, B.
  
• Preference for other persons‘traits is dependent on the kind of social relationship. Social Psychology, Vol. 44. 2013, Issue 2, pp. 84-94.
  Abele, A.E., Brack, S.
  
• The Big Two of Agency and Communion in Language and Communication. In J. Forgas, O. Vincze, & J. Laszlo (Eds.). Social Cognition and Communication. Psychology Press, New York, 2013, pp. 173-184.
  Abele, A.E. & Bruckmüller, S.
  
• The Bigger one of the “Big Two”: Preferential Processing of Communal Information. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Vol. 44. 2013, Issue 2, pp. 935-948.
  Abele, A.E., Bruckmüller, S.
  
• The density of the „Big Two“: How are agency and communion represented in our heads? Social Psychology, 44. 2013, pp. 63-74.
  Bruckmüller, S., & Abele, A. E.
  
• Communal and agentic content. A dual perspective model. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Vol. 50. 2014, pp. 195–255.
  Abele, A.E. & Wojciszke, B.
  
• Pursuit of communal values in an agentic manner: A way to happiness? Frontiers of Psychology, Vol. 5. 2014, No. 1320.
  Abele, A.E.
  
• You are so kind – and I am kind and smart: Actor – Observer Differences in the Interpretation of On-going Behavior. Polish Psychological Bulletin, Bd. 45. 2014, Heft 4, pp. 394-401.
  Abele, A.E., Bruckmüller, S., Wojciszke, B.
  
• Agency und Communion: Basisdimensionen der sozialen Kognition. 16. Kap. in: D. Frey & H.-W. Bierhoff (Eds.), Selbst und soziale Kognition, Bd. 1 Sozialpsychologie (Enzyklopedie der Psychologie). Hogrefe Verlag, 2016. - 9783844405637
  Abele, A.E., Bruckmüller, S.