Agency and communion from the perspective of self versus others.

Abstract

On the basis of previous research, the authors hypothesize that (a) person descriptive terms can be organized into the broad dimensions of agency and communion of which communion is the primary one; (b) the main distinction between these dimensions pertains to their profitability for the self (agency) vs. for other persons (communion); hence, agency is more desirable and important in the self-perspective, and communion is more desirable and important in the other-perspective; (c) self-other outcome dependency increases importance of another person's agency. Study 1 showed that a large number of trait names can be reduced to these broad dimensions, that communion comprises more item variance, and that agency is predicted by self-profitability and communion by other-profitability. Studies 2 and 3 showed that agency is more relevant and desired for self, and communion is more relevant and desired for others. Study 4 showed that agency is more important in a close friend than an unrelated peer, and this difference is completely mediated by the perceived outcome dependency.

Exploring the Dynamics of Incongruent Beliefs about Women and Leaders

“…Exploring the Dynamics -40 i In line with scientific consensus about agency and communion as two basic dimensions for judgments of self, others, and groups (see Abele & Wojciszke, 2007;Suitner & Maass, 2008) and scholars' application of these two dimensions to gender (e.g., Bem, 1974;Heilman & Okimoto, 2007), masculine personality and feminine personality were conceptualized and measured as two independent dimensions of gender stereotypes in our study.…”

Changing the personality of a face: Perceived Big Two and Big Five personality factors modeled in real photographs.

“…Interestingly, on the semantic-conceptual level, the 2D model of Oosterhof & Todorov (2008), which was built on face-based person evaluation, fits other two dimensional models of social perception, such as the Stereotype Content Model with the two dimensions of warmth and competence to describe social groups (Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, & Xu, 2002;Fiske, Cuddy, & Glick, 2007), the model of interpersonal perception with the two dimensions love and dominance (Wiggins, Phillips, & Trapnell, 1989;Wiggins, 1979) or morality and competence (Wojciszke, Bazinska, & Jaworski, 1998;Wojciszke, 1994), and the Big Two personality concept with the dimensions communion and agency (Abele, Uchronski, Suitner, & Wojciszke, 2008;Abele & Wojciszke, 2007;Wiggins, 1991). Though these models differ in several critical aspects, one clear commonality emerges from their joint examination: There are two dimensions, namely valence (or morality/warmth/love/communion) and dominance (or competence/agency), which individuals rely on when referring to individuals, social groups, or to themselves.…”

“…Investigating personality judgments with respect to the Big Two personality dimensions is important because the Big Two dimensions communion and agency are semantically similar to the two basic dimensions of face evaluation, trustworthiness and dominance (Abele, Uchronski, Suitner, & Wojciszke, 2008;Abele & Wojciszke, 2007;Wiggins, 1991).…”

The communality-bonus effect for male transformational leaders – leadership style, gender, and promotability

“…(α = .89, Thacker & Wayne, 1995). Agency was measured with a 7-point semantic differential of the four items; "not assertive -assertive", "not selfconfident -self-confident", "not active -active", and "not selfreliant -self-reliant" (α = .93, Abele & Wojciszke, 2007).…”