Autonomy-supportive and controlling styles of teaching are usually considered to be the opposite ends of a single continuum. An alternative view, however, is that individuals can perceive both styles simultaneously, which suggests that they are different constructs ( Bartholomew, Ntoumanis, Ryan, Bosch, & Thøgersen-Ntoumani, 2011 ). Using cluster analysis, Study 1 (N = 160) confirmed that both teaching styles were perceived by students. Four clusters appeared depending on the student’s score on the measures of autonomy and controlling styles (high autonomy–high control; low autonomy–low control; high autonomy–low control; low autonomy–high control). Participants in the high autonomy–low control cluster reported the highest self-determined motivation in their studies. Using path analysis and mediational analyses, Study 2 (N = 127) tested the independence of the two styles by studying the process through which they influenced motivation. The results showed that need satisfaction (specifically, the need for autonomy) mediated the path between perceived autonomy-supportive teacher behavior and motivation, and that need-thwarting (specifically, the need for autonomy and relatedness) mediated the path between perceived controlling teacher behavior and self-determined motivation, which in turn predicted academic performance. These results add to the existing literature supporting the independence of the two styles.

Distinct and simultaneous effects of autonomy-supportive and controlling styles, usually considered as mutually exclusive, on situational self-determined motivation are tested. In Study 1, economics students (N = 100; 57 men, 43 women; M age = 21.5 yr.) were randomly assigned to one of the four experimental conditions (high vs. low) of autonomy supportive and/or controlling behaviors during a task. Results supported the independence of those constructs. An unexpected effect in regards to Self-determination Theory was found in the Low autonomy - High control condition in which self-determined motivation was observed. The interpretation for this specific condition, an effect due to the attempt to reduce cognitive dissonance triggered by the commitment procedure, was tested. In Study 2, sport students (N = 80, 44 men, 36 women; M age = 19.2 yr.) were randomly assigned to one of the three experimental conditions: No commitment, Commitment plus self-affirmation, and Commitment without self-affirmation. Results supported Study 1's interpretation: motivation was lower when participants were recruited without a commitment procedure or when they were invited to self-affirm than when participants recruited with a commitment procedure.

Three experiments were designed to demonstrate that job performance inferences from personality inventories rely more on the agentic or communal value conveyed by the items compared with the Big-Five traits they are supposed to describe. In the first two experiments, the participants had to predict the job performances of fictitious job applicants based on their responses to a personality inventory. In Experiment 1, the information on personality was held constant, such that the applicants' responses varied solely on their agentic, communal, or purely descriptive orientation. In Experiment 2, the social value of the responses again varied as well as the information about the applicants' personality (agreeable vs. conscientious). The results showed that the agentic profiles were the most predictive of the performance, regardless of the personality factors. In Experiment 3, we reversed the procedure. The participants filled out a personality inventory in the place of a more or less successful employee. The results here showed that the information about the performance had the greatest impact on the agentic items, independent of the personality factors measured. These results confirm the relevance of social judgment models in personality research.

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Relying on the Big Two framework (Abele et al., 2016(Abele et al., , 2021 and the distinction of agency into the facets of assertiveness and ability, three experimental studies address the hypothesis that assertiveness and ability are influenced differentially by the consequences of success or failure. In Studies 1 and 2, participants had to imagine presenting a product developed by a hospital to an audience while either knowing or not knowing that selling the product could have strong positive consequences for the hospital's budget. They further had to imagine that they had succeeded in positively presenting the product or that they had failed. Study 2 replicated the design with the participants enacting the task for real. Supporting our hypotheses, we consistently found that self-evaluation of assertiveness was higher with both success and knowledge about the economic consequences, whereas self-evaluation of ability was higher with success but without knowledge of economic consequences. These findings support the facet approach of the agency dimension and give hints on how the assertiveness versus ability facets of self-evaluation differ.