Understanding the Cognitive Representation of the “Big Two”

The overarching goal of the proposed line of studies is to further the understanding of agency and communion (the “Big Two”) two fundamental dimensions that structure perception and judgment of the self, other people, and social groups. Communion reflects the need for connection and positive relations with others while agency reflects the need to achieve goals and to emphasize one’s own values. Despite an extensive literature on these “Big Two” dimensions, little attention has been devoted to the structure of their cognitive representation. This project aim to fill this theoretical gap.

The researchers presumed that communion is represented as a more homogenous and conceptually denser construct than agency, thus communion is represented in a more categorical/bipolar fashion than agency. As a result, lay people have different implicit personality theories for agency and communion. That is, lay people tend to judge communion in an either-or fashion (somebody is either a good or a bad person) whereas agency has more intermediate steps. The analysis of the implicit personality theories associated with dimensions of agency and communion will be an important part of the proposed project.

To accommodate the extensive previous literature on agency and communion, we combine a range of different methods and data sources. To test these hypotheses, we combine re-analyses of previous data (a meta-analysis of reliability coefficients and structural equation modeling of large-scale survey data) with controlled experiments employing innovative methods, such as spatial arrangement. Conducting parallel studies in Poland and Germany will allow us to gauge the generalizability of findings across languages. In conclusion, this project will enhance understanding of the “Big Two” dimensions, it will explain some seemingly contradictory previous findings in the “Big Two” research, and will continue and expand a fruitful collaboration between Polish and German researchers.

This research question is important not only because agency and communion, and related constructs are fundamental dimensions, but also because those differences can have far reaching consequences for theory (e.g., by providing an explanation for some inconsistencies in the previous literature), as well as for research practice, for measurement approaches and for analytical strategies in particular. Moreover, agency and communion as fundamental dimensions of social cognition are heavily based on language. Testing our hypotheses in a German and Polish setting will allow us to assess the generalizability of our finding across two languages from relatively remote language families, West Slavic (Polish) and West Germanic (German), respectively.

The researchers from SWPS University in Sopot (Bogdan Wojciszke and Michał Parzuchowski) and the University of Koblenz-Landau (Susanne Bruckmüller) will coordinate their research efforts and collaborate on all parts of the working program, this will result in a joint publication of the results. Complementary areas of expertise within the research team create a group that is excellently suited to investigate the structural representation of the “Big Two”. All involved researchers are experts in these fundamental dimensions and have previously published on the topic. They bring different theoretical and methodological foci and experiences to the research team. This project will not only build on previous collaboration, but will also lay the foundation for future collaborative endeavors by closely integrating a postdoctoral researcher and two Ph.D. students (one in Poland and one in Germany). A high level of integration will be achieved via annual meetings of the whole team, as well as by research stays of the Ph.D. students and the postdoctoral researcher in the partner country.