Agentic Thinking About Others Makes Them Closer

• Authors: Jaroslaw Piotrowski , Bogdan Wojciszke
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

A substantial amount of research showed that agency (concerning goal attainment) and communion (concerning relationships maintenance) are two basic dimensions of content in social cognition. Based on the well-supported idea that people typically think about themselves and close others in agentic rather than communal terms, we tested the hypothesis that agentic (but not communal) thinking about unknown others makes them subjectively closer. This hypothesis was confirmed in four experiments differently priming agentic versus communal thinking on others. As predicted, increases in closeness resulting from the agentic thinking about others were constrained to cognitive load conditions where participants were occupied with a parallel task. We conclude that the agentic content of thoughts about others serves as an intuitive, heuristic cue of their psychological closeness.

Keywords

EN

Agency; Communion; Closeness

• Publisher: Committee for Psychological Sciences, Polish Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Polish Psychological Bulletin
• Year: 2015
• Volume: 46
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 523-534

Dates

published

2015-12-01

online

2015-11-26

Contributors

author

Jaroslaw Piotrowski

• University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Poznan Campus, ul. Gen. Tadeusza Kutrzeby 10, Poznan 61719, Poland

author

Bogdan Wojciszke

• University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Sopot Campus, ul. Polna 16/20, Sopot 81745, Poland

References

• Abele, A.E., & Brack, S. (2013). Preference for other persons‘ traits is dependent on the kind of social relationship. Social Psychology, 44, 84-94.[WoS][Crossref]
• Abele, A.E., & Bruckmüller, S. (2011). The bigger one of the “Big Two”? Preferential processing of communal information. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47, 935-948.[Crossref]
• Abele, A.E., & Wojciszke, B. (2007). Agency and communion from the perspective of self versus others. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93, 751-763.[Crossref][WoS]
• Abele, A.E., & Wojciszke, B. (2014). Communal and agentic contents in social cognition: A Dual Perspective Model. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 50, 195-255.[WoS][Crossref]
• Aron, A., Aron, E.N., & Smollan, D. (1992). Inclusion of other in the self scale and the structure of interpersonal closeness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63, 596-612.[Crossref]
• Aron, A., McLaughlin-Volpe, T., Mashek, D., Lewandowski, G., Wright, S.C., Aron, E.N. (2004). Including close others in the self. European Review of Social Psychology, 15, 101-132.[Crossref]
• Baumeister, R.F., Leary, M.R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117, 497-529.
• Burger, J.M., Messian, N., Patel, S., del Prado, A., Anderson, C. (2004). What a coincidence! The effects of incidental similarity on compliance. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30, 35-43.[Crossref]
• Chaiken, S., Trope, Y. (1999), (Eds.). Dual-process theories in social psychology. New York: Guilford Press.
• Cislak, A., & Wojciszke, B. (2008). Agency and communion are inferred from actions serving interests of self or others. European Journal of Social Psychology, 38, 1103-1110.[WoS][Crossref]
• Clark, M.S., & Mills, J.R. (2011). A theory of communal (and exchange) relationships. In P.A.M. Van Lange, A.W. Kruglanski & E.T. Higgins (Eds.) Handbook of theories of social psychology (pp. 232-250). Los Angeles, CA: Sage.
• Cuddy, A.J., Fiske, S.T., & Glick, P. (2008). Warmth and competence as universal dimensions of social perception: The stereotype content model and the BIAS map. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 40, 61-149.[Crossref][WoS]
• De Bruin, E.N.M., & Van Lange, P.A.M. (2000). What people look for in others: Infl uences of the perceiver and the perceived on information selection. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26, 206-219.[Crossref]
• DeCoster, J., Claypool, H.M. (2004). A meta-analysis of priming effects on impression formation supporting a general model of informational biases. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 8, 2-27.[Crossref]
• Dibble, J.L., Levine, T.R., & Park, H.S. (2012). The Unidimensional Relationship Closeness Scale (URCS): Reliability and validity for a new measure of relationship closeness. Psychological Assessment, 24, 565-572.[WoS][Crossref]
• Finch, J.F., & Cialdini, R.B. (1989). Another indirect tactic of (self-) image management: Boosting. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 15, 222-232.[Crossref]
• Fiske, S.T., Cuddy, A.J.C., & Glick, P. (2007). First judge warmth, then competence: Fundamental social dimensions. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11, 77-83.[WoS][Crossref]
• Főrster, J., & Strack. F. (1996). The infl uence of overt head movements on memory for valenced words: A case of conceptual-motor compatibility. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 421-430.[Crossref]
• Galinsky, A.D., Ku, G., & Wang, C.S. (2008). Perspective-takers behave more stereotypically. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 404-419.[Crossref][WoS]
• Galinsky, A.D., & Moskowitz, G.B. (2000). Perspective taking: Decreasing stereotype expression, stereotype accessibility, and in-group favoritism. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78, 708-724.[Crossref]
• Gebauer, J., Wagner, J., Sedikides, C., & Neberich, W. (2013). Agencycommunion and self-esteem relations are moderated by culture, religiosity, age, and sex: Evidence for the “self-centrality breads self-enhancement” principle. Journal of Personality, 81, 261-275.[Crossref][WoS]
• Gino, F., & Galinsky, A.D. (2012). Vicarious dishonesty: When psychological closeness creates distance from one’s moral compass. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 119, 15-26.[WoS]
• Goldstein, N.J., & Cialdini, R.B. (2007). The spyglass self: A model of vicarious self-perception. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 402-417.[Crossref]
• Helgeson, V.S., & Fritz, H.L. (1998). A theory of unmitigated communion. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 2, 173-183.[Crossref]
• Higgins. E.T. (1996). Knowledge activation: Accessibility, applicability, and salience. In F.T. Higgins & A.W. Kruglanski (Eds.). Social psychology: Handbook of basic principles (pp. 133-168). New York: Guilford.
• Judd, C.M., James-Hawkins, L., Yzerbyt, V., & Kashima, Y. (2005). Fundamental dimensions of social judgment: Understanding the relations between competence and warmth. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89, 899-913.[WoS][Crossref]
• Kervyn, N., Bergsieker, H.B., & Fiske, S.T. (2012). The innuendo effect: Hearing the positive but inferring the negative. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48, 77-85.[Crossref]
• Leach, C.W., Bilali, R., & Pagliaro, S. (2013). Groups and morality. In J. Simpson & J.F. Dovidio (Eds.). APA Handbook of personality and social psychology, Vol. 2: Interpersonal Relationships and Group Processes. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
• Leach, C.W., Ellemers, N., & Barreto, M. (2007). Group virtue: The importance of morality (vs. competence and sociability) in the positive evaluation of in-groups. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93, 234-249.[Crossref]
• MacKinnon, D.P., Fairchild, A.J., & Fritz, M.S. (2007). Mediation analysis. Annual Review of Psychology, 58, 593-614.[Crossref][WoS]
• Norton, M.I., Monin, B., Cooper, J., & Hogg, M.A. (2003). Vicarious dissonance: Attitude change from the inconsistency of others. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 47-62.[Crossref]
• Peeters, G. (1992). Evaluative meanings of adjectives in vitro and in context: Some theoretical implications and practical consequences of positive negative asymmetry and behavioral-adaptive concepts of evaluation. Psychologia Belgica, 32, 211-231.
• Pelham, B.W., Carvallo, A., & Jones, J.T. (2005). Implicit egotism. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14, 106-110.[Crossref]
• Preacher, K.J., & Hayes, A.F. (2004). SPSS and SAS procedures for estimating indirect effects in simple mediation models. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, and Computers, 36, 717-731.[Crossref]
• Schwarz, N. (2012). Feelings-as-information theory. In P. Van Lange, A. Kruglanski, & E.T. Higgins (Eds.). Handbook of theories of social psychology (pp. 289-308). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
• Strack, F., Deutsch, R. (2004). Refl ective and impulsive determinants of social behavior. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 8, 220-247.[Crossref]
• Wells. G.L. & Petty. R.E. (1980). The effects of overt head movements on persuasion: Compatibility and incompatibility of responses. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 1, 219-230.
• Wojciszke, B. (1994). Multiple meanings of behavior: Construing actions in terms of competence or morality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67, 222-232.[Crossref]
• Wojciszke, B. (2005). Morality and competence in person- and self-perception. European Review of Social Psychology, 16, 155-188.[Crossref]
• Wojciszke, B., & Abele, A.E. (2008). The primacy of communion over agency and its reversals in evaluations. European Journal of Social Psychology, 38, 1139-1147.[Crossref][WoS]
• Wojciszke, B., Abele, A.E., & Baryła, W. (2009). Two dimensions of interpersonal attitudes: Liking depends on communion, respect depends on agency. European Journal of Social Psychology, 39, 973-990.[WoS][Crossref]
• Wojciszke, B., Bazinska, R., & Jaworski, M. (1998). On the dominance of moral categories in impression formation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 24, 1245-1257.[Crossref]
• Wojciszke, B., Baryla, W., Parzuchowski, M., Szymkow, A., & Abele, A.E. (2011). Self-esteem is dominated by agency over communion. European Journal of Social Psychology, 41, 617-627.[Crossref]
• Wojciszke, B., & Bialobrzeska, B. (2014). Agency versus communion as predictors of self-esteem: Searching for the role of culture and selfconstrual. Polish Psychological Bulletin, 45, 469-479.[Crossref]
• Wojciszke, B., & Sobiczewska, P. (2013). Memory and self-esteem. The role of agentic and communal content. Social Psychology, 44, 95-103.[WoS][Crossref]
• Wojciszke, B., & Szlendak, M. (2010). Skale do pomiaru orientacji sprawczej i wspolnotowej [Scales for measuring the agentic and communal orientation]. Psychologia Spoleczna, 5, 57-69.

Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/ppb-2015-0059