You are so kind – and I am kind and smart: Actor – Observer Differences in the Interpretation of On-going Behavior

• Authors: Andrea E. Abele , Susanne Bruckmüller , Bogdan Wojciszke
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

: The dual perspective model of agency and communion predicts that observers tend to interpret a target’s behavior more in terms of communion than agency, whereas actors interpret their behavior more in terms of agency. The present research for the first time tests this model in real interactions. Previously unacquainted participants had a short conversation and afterwards rated their own behavior (actor perspective) and their interaction partner’s behavior (observer perspective) in terms of agency(self-confident, assertive) and communion(trustworthy, empathic). Supporting the dual perspective model, observers rated the actor’s behavior higher on communion than on agency, and higher on communion than actors themselves did. Findings for actors were more complex: Actors rated their own behavior as more agentic than observers did. However, they also rated their behavior high on communion. We discuss implications for the dual perspective model as well as for (mis)understandings in social interactions.

Keywords

EN

actor-observer differences; agency; communion; dual perspective model

• Publisher: Committee for Psychological Sciences, Polish Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Polish Psychological Bulletin
• Year: 2014
• Volume: 45
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 394-401

Dates

published

2014-12-01

online

2014-12-16

Contributors

author

Andrea E. Abele

• Social Psychology Group, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Bismarckstr. 6, 91054 Erlangen, Germany;

author

Susanne Bruckmüller

• University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany

author

Bogdan Wojciszke

• University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Sopot Campus, Poland

References

• Abele, A. E. (2003). The dynamics of masculine-agentic and femininecommunal traits. Findings from a prospective study. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 768-776.
• Abele, A.E.,& Brack, S. (2013). Preference for other persons’ traits is dependent on the kind of social relationship. Social Psychology, 44, 84-94.[Crossref][WoS]
• 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.
• Abele, A. E., Rupprecht, T., & Wojciszke, B. (2008). The influence of success and failure experiences on agency. European Journal of Social Psychology, 38, 436-448.
• Abele, A. E., Uchronski, M., Suitner, C., & Wojciszke, B. (2008). 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 Psychology, 38, 1202-1217.[WoS]
• Abele, A.E.,& Wojciszke, B. (2014). Communal and agentic content in social cognition: A dual perspective model. In Olson, J. & Zanna, M. (Eds), (2014). Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 46, in press.[WoS]
• 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.[WoS]
• Bakan, D. (1966). The duality of human existence. An essay on psychology and religion. Chicago: Rand Mcnally.
• Carlston, D. E., & Skowronski, J. J. (1994). Savings in the relearning of trait information as evidence for spontaneous inference generation.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66, 840-856.[Crossref]
• Corrigall, E. A., & Konrad, A. M. (2007). Gender role attitudes and careers: A longitudinal study. Sex Roles, 56, 847-855.
• De Bruin, E. N. M., & Van Lange, P. A. M. (1999). Impression formation and cooperative behavior. European Journal of Social Psychology, 29, 305-328.[Crossref]
• De Bruin, E. N. M., & Van Lange, P. A. M. (2000). What people look for in others: Influences of the perceiver and the perceived on information selection. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26, 206-219.[Crossref]
• Fiske, S. T., Cuddy, A. J. C., & Glick, P. (2007). Universal dimensions of social cognition: Warmth and competence. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11(2), 77-83.[Crossref][WoS][PubMed]
• Gebauer, J., Wagner, J., Sedikidis, C., & Neberich, W. (2012). Agencycommunion and self-esteem relations are moderated by culture, religiosity, age, and sex: Evidence for the “self-centrality breeds selfenhancement” principle. Journal of Personality, 81, 261-275.[WoS]
• Heider, F. (1958). The psychology of interpersonal relations. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
• Helgeson, V. S. (1994). Relation of agency and communion to well-being: Evidence and potential explanations. Psychological Bulletin, 116, 412-428.
• Jones, E. E., & Nisbett, R. E. (1971). The actor and the observer: Divergent perceptions of the causes of behavior. Morristown, NJ: General Learning Press.
• Jones, E. E., & Thibaut, J. W. (1958). Interaction goals as bases of inference in interpersonal perception. In Tagiuri, R.& Petrullo, L. (Eds.), Person perception and interpersonal behavior (pp. 151-178). Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.
• Judd, C. M., James-Hawkins, L., Yzerbyt, V., & Kashima, Y. (2005).Fundamental dimensions of social judgment: Understanding the relations between judgments of competence and warmth. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89, 899-913.[WoS]
• Kenworthy, J., & Tausch, N. (2008). Beliefs about the utility and stability of trait attributions in an intergroup context: Differences between warmth and competence. European Journal of Social Psychology, 38, 1121-1129.
• Kashy, D. A., & Kenny, D. A. (2000). The analysis of data from dyads and groups. In Reis, H. T.& Judd, C. M. (Eds.), Handbook of research methods in social and personality psychology (pp. 451-477). New York, NY, US: Cambridge University Press.
• Kirchmeyer, C. (1998). Determinants of managerial career success: Evidence and explanation of male/female differences. Journal of Management, 24, 673-692.[Crossref]
• Malle, B. (2006). The actor-observer asymmetry in attribution: A (surprising) meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 132(6), 895-919.
• Malle, B. F., & Knobe, J. (1997). Which behaviors do people explain? A basic actor-observer asymmetry. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72, 288-304.
• Malle, B. F., Knobe, J. M., & Nelson, S. E. (2007). Actor-observer asymmetries in explanations of behavior: New answers to an old question. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93, 491-514.
• Newman, L. S., & Uleman, J . S. (1989). Spontaneous trait inference. In Uleman, J. S. &Bargh, J. A. (Eds.), Unintended thought (pp 155-188).New York: Guilford.
• Nisbett, R. E., Caputo, C., Legant, P., & Marecek, J. (1973). Behavior as seen by the actor and as seen by the observer. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 27, 154-164.[Crossref]
• Paulhus, D. L., & Trapnell, P. D. (2008). Self-presentation of personality: An agency-communion framework. In John, O. P., Robins, R. W. & Pervin, L. A. (Eds.), Handbook of personality psychology: Theory and research (3rd ed.) (pp. 492-517). New York, NY, US: Guilford Press.
• 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. Psychologica Belgica, 32(2), 211-231.
• Peeters, G. (2001). In search for a social-behavioral approach-avoidance dimension associated with evaluative trait meanings. Psychologica Belgica, 41(4), 187-203.
• Peeters, G. (2008). The evaluative face of a descriptive model: Communion and agency in Peabody’s tetradic model of trait organization.European Journal of Social Psychology, 38, 1066-1072.[WoS]
• Peeters, G., & Czapinski, J. (1990). Positive-negative asymmetry in evaluations: The distinction between affective and informational negative effects. In Stroebe, W. & Hewstone, M. (Eds.), European review of social psychology (Vol. 1, pp. 33-60). London: Wiley.
• Rim, S., Uleman, J. S., & Trope, Y. (2009). Spontaneous trait inference and construal level theory: Psychological distance increases nonconscious trait thinking. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 1088-1097.[Crossref][PubMed][WoS]
• Robins, R. W., Spranca, M. D., & Mendelsohn, G. A. (1996). The actorobserver effect revisited: Effects of individual differences and repeated social interactions on actor and observer attributions.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 375-389.
• Sande, G. N., Goethals, G. R., & Radloff, C. E. (1988). Perceiving one’s own traits and others’: The multifaceted self. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 13-20.[Crossref]
• Scholer, A. A., & Higgins, E. T. (2008). People as resources: Exploring the functionality of warm and cold. European Journal of Social Psychology, 38, 1111-1120.[WoS]
• Storms, M. D. (1973). Videotape and the attribution process: Reversing actors’ and observers’ points of view. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 27, 165-175.[PubMed][Crossref]
• Taylor, S. E., & Fiske, S. T. (1975). Point of view and perceptions of causality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32, 439-445.[Crossref]
• Uchronski, M. (2008). Agency and communion in spontaneous selfdescriptions: Occurrence and situational malleability. European Journal of Social Psychology, 38, 1093-1102.[WoS]
• 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., & Abele, A. E. (2008). The primacy of communion over agency and its reversals in evaluations. European Journal of Social Psychology, 38, 1139-1147.[WoS]
• Wojciszke, B., Bazinska, R., & Jaworski, M. (1998). On the dominance of moral categories in impression formation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 24, 1245-1257.
• Wojciszke, B., Baryla, W., Parzuchowski, M., Szymkow, A.,& Abele, A.E. (2011). Self-esteem is dominated by agentic over communal information. European Journal of Social Psychology, 41, 617-627.[Crossref][WoS]
• Ybarra, O., Chan, E., & Park, D. (2001). Young and old adults’ concerns about moralityand competence. Motivation and Emotion, 25, 85-100.[Crossref]
• Ybarra, O., Chan, E., Park, H., Burnstein, E., Monin, B., & Stanik, C. (2008). Life’s recurring challenges and the fundamental dimensions: An integration and its implications for cultural differences and similarities. European Journal of Social Psychology, 38, 1083-1092.[WoS]
• Ybarra, O., Park, H., Stanik, C., & Lee, D. S. (2012). Self-judgment and reputation monitoring as a function of the fundamental dimensions, Temporal perspective, and culture. European Journal of Social Psychology, 42, 200-209. [WoS][Crossref]

Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/ppb-2014-0048