•Measures of agency, communion, and humanness are often confounded and non-independent.•We propose agency and communion as fundamental dimensions to humanness attribution.•Four studies compared ...agency and communion strength in predicting dehumanization.•Agency and communion are stable and equally strong predictors of dehumanization.
Among the main factors considered as predictors of humanness attribution were agency and communion. Agency constitutes an ability to affect one's own situation and communion an ability to form meaningful relationships with others. Seen as a cross-culturally universal framework for how people construe the world, these dimensions have been theorized to be pivotal for seeing others as humans and accordingly as less than humans. However, research testing the predictive power of agency and communion (or more fine-grained distinction of sociability and morality) for humanness ratings is showing a complex picture. Part of this complexity can be attributed to non-independence of measures used in previous research, as some traits pertaining to agency and communion were also used in measuring humanness perception, thus posing a risk of multicollinearity. Furthermore, the strength of the relationship of agency and communion with humanness conceptualizations was never tested, thus not allowing to compare which (if any) predictor is stronger. To address these limitations, we asked participants to rate our focal variables both at trait and group levels (4 studies; Ntot = 2565) in which we test the association of agency, communion (as well as morality and sociability), and different humanness measures. Across all studies, we also tested the strength of the relationship of agency and communion with humanness conceptualizations finding a stable and equal in strength relationship of agency and communion with humanness attribution.
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•Participants narrated eight event memories that were coded for communion themes.•Communion predicted well-being, but only for women, not men.•Communion also predicted self-reported restricted ...emotionality for women.•Restricted emotionality mediated the link between communion and well-being.•Findings discussed in terms of social influences on gendered patterns of narration.
Communion is a core psychological motive that contributes to well-being. Narrative expressions of communion are considered centrally important for personality but also are stereotypically associated with gender. Eight autobiographical memory narratives per participant (N = 96) were content-coded for communion. A moderated mediation model found that narrated communion predicted psychological well-being, but this relation was moderated by gender and mediated by restricted emotion. Communion predicted well-being for women but not for men. Restricted emotional expression correlated to lower well-being for all participants but was only related to communion for women but not men. Findings are interpreted in terms of how the ‘good life’ emerges from the dialogue between personal narrative and the master narratives against which they are positioned for the individual.
Collective narcissists are hostile towards outgroup members, especially in response to threats against the ingroup. In the current study (N = 662; Polish community sample), we examined the ...associations between collective narcissism and intergroup relations using the agency–communion model of collective narcissism during the initial weeks of the COVID-19 threat in Poland. Assuming the COVID-19 threat is agentic (i.e., related to biological and economic danger), we expected it to be unrelated to collective narcissism’s communal aspect. We also expected that collective narcissists would enhance their ingroup image to modify the effects of the COVID-19 threat on intergroup relations. In general, collective narcissism was related to less favorable attitudes toward the European Union, more favorable attitudes toward China, and a willingness to help Italians. The agentic aspect of narcissism was unrelated to intergroup prosocialness, while the communal aspect of narcissism was unrelated to attitudes toward the European Union. The COVID threat suppressed unfavorable attitudes towards the European Union among collective narcissists. Therefore, the COVID threat has limited yet unexpected effects on attitudes toward outgroups among collective narcissists.
Les mesures sanitaires imposées en raison de la pandémie COVID-19 ont attaqué l’essence même du théâtre vivant. De nombreuses propositions ont été avancées pour l’aider à traverser cette crise et le ...rediriger vers de nouvelles technologies. Je crois que certains de ces conseils comportent de graves menaces pour la survie même du théâtre vivant. Se basant sur l’offre par transmission électronique d’une partie du spectacle, c’est-à-dire la scène, ces propositions occultent la présence physique de la réception, à savoir la salle. Or, il n’y a de théâtre que s’il y a une rencontre réelle entre les deux. Bien que la retransmission du théâtre vivant par la radio et la télévision existe depuis presque 100 ans, l’engouement actuel pour le streaming est tel qu’il rend la résistance difficile. L’offre, souvent brillante et « gratuite », risque d’être perçue par une partie du public potentiel comme du « vrai » théâtre et par les pouvoirs publics comme un remplacement bon marché. Enfin, le danger le plus grave serait peut-être de voir les femmes et les hommes de théâtre séduits par des chimères technologiques.
Humans make sense of their social environment by forming impressions of others that allow predicting others’ actions. In this process of social perception, two types of information carry pivotal ...importance: other entities’ communion (i.e., warmth and trustworthiness) and agency (i.e., status and power). Although commonly thought of as orthogonal dimensions, we propose that these Big Two of social perception are curvilinearly related. Specifically, as we delineate from four different theoretical explanations, impressions of communion should peak at average agency, while entities too high or too low on agency should be perceived as low on communion. We show this pattern for social groups across one novel and five previously published data sets, including a meta-analysis of the most comprehensive data collection in the group perception literature, consisting of 36 samples from more than 20 countries. Addressing the generalizability of this curvilinear relation, we then report recent and unpublished experiments establishing the effect for the perception of individuals and animals. On the basis of the proposed curvilinear relation, we revisit the primacy of processing communion (rather than agency) information. Finally, we discuss the possibility of a more general curvilinear relation between communion and dimensions other than agency.
Businesses have long been admonished for being unduly focused on the pursuit of profit. However, there are some organizations whose purpose is not exclusively economic to the extent that they seek to ...constitute common good. Building on Christian ethics as a starting point, our article shows how the pursuit of the common good of the firm can serve as a guide for humanistic management. It provides two principles that humanistic management can attempt to implement: first, that community good is a condition for the realization of personal good, and second, that community good can only be promoted if it is oriented towards personal good. To better understand which community good can favor personal good and how it can be achieved, we examine two recent humanistic movements—Conscious Capitalism and Economy of Communion—that strive to participate in the common good. From the analysis of these two movements, we identify a shared managerial willingness to adopt the two principles. Moreover, we also reveal that Conscious Capitalism and Economy of Communion present different ways of linking community good and personal good, and therefore, different means exist for firms to participate in the common good.
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